Hello,
I am Augustto Ribeiro, an artist born and raised in Santana do Araçuaí, in the heart of the Jequitinhonha Valley, in the north of Minas Gerais, Brazil — a place where art is not only a craft, but part of the identity of who we are.
Since childhood, clay has been my greatest companion — it was something I rediscovered the moment I was born. In every piece I create, I carry fragments of my story, my ancestry, and the culture of our rich Jequitinhonha Valley.
I like to say that I was born into a cradle of clay and creativity, inside the enchanted world of the dolls. By the time I arrived in this world, Dona Izabel — our great master artist — had already created this extraordinary universe of figurative ceramics, rewriting the story of our people through beauty and resilience.
From a very young age, I was fascinated. Each doll seemed to possess its own life; the connection I felt with them was surreal, even as a small child.
At the age of four, I sculpted my first little doll using the leftover clay that fell from the hands of my mother, Alice, and my aunt, Ana. While other children played with toy cars or plastic dolls, I preferred creating my own toys. Clay was always my favorite plaything — my freedom to shape whatever I could imagine. That is how everything began: through passion, connection, curiosity, imagination, and the meaningful silence of the studios of these remarkable women.
I was always excited to follow my aunt Ana to each new lesson at Dona Izabel’s studio, where she learned to sculpt the dolls’ heads under the careful and patient guidance of the master artist. In that place, my world would stop and time seemed to move differently. I remember being mesmerized by the strength each doll carried. It felt as though they were communicating with me somehow. Even today, I still cannot fully explain it in words, but something similar happens when my own dolls seem to look back at me. I believe it is the magic and sensitivity our art is capable of transmitting.
Very early on, I learned that all we truly needed was our imagination and the clay that the earth itself offered us. The transformation of matter was — and still is — our form of expression. I did not yet possess technical mastery, but when it comes to play, there are no rules: all I needed was intuition and the freedom to let things flow, just as Izabel herself always said.
As the years passed, those small figures grew alongside me. By the age of fifteen, I was already creating large-scale dolls, marking a new chapter in my artistic journey. One moment that remains especially meaningful to me was sculpting an elderly woman inspired by my grandmother Sinhá, who was a friend of Dona Izabel. That piece awakened deep emotional connections in many people because of its marked features, which spoke about the passage of time through the language of the traditional Valley dolls.
Today, I continue to research and create. My work unites the strength of the Jequitinhonha Valley’s ancestral traditions with my contemporary perspective. My dolls incorporate modern details — such as outlined eyes, false eyelashes, vibrant colors, voluminous hair, and highly expressive facial features — while still preserving the essence of the history that brought me here.
I always seek to tell our story — the story of our ancestors — while also expressing my own vision as an artist translating the present, a present built through the strength and perseverance of all those who came before us. I understand myself as the continuation of a beautiful story that transformed the hardships of survival into affection and beauty.
I believe that each piece is an extension of my imagination, but also of the collective memory of my people. At the same time, I carry the desire to celebrate freedom, acceptance, and the human capacity to dream — even when life once seemed difficult.
Dona Izabel was a generous star who illuminated the path of everyone around her, sharing her knowledge with simplicity and patience. I was fortunate to grow up surrounded by women who taught me how to create not only with my hands, but also with my heart. Even today, I often find myself looking at my own dolls in the same way I did as a child, hardly believing that they emerged from my own hands and from the very lumps of clay we gather directly from the earth itself.
The Jequitinhonha Valley
The Jequitinhonha Valley is a land that, for a long time, was seen only through the lens of poverty and scarcity. But those born here know another story: the story of a people who transform dry earth into color, poetry, and resilience.
Located in the northeastern region of Minas Gerais, Brazil, the Valley stretches across more than 85,000 square kilometers, encompassing dozens of towns scattered among mountains, rivers, and long periods of drought. Before the arrival of Europeans, this territory was home to many Indigenous nations, many of which were later erased, silenced, or persecuted. Over the centuries, the region also became marked by mineral exploitation, slavery, and political neglect, eventually becoming associated, in the popular imagination, with hardship and deprivation.
Yet despite so many losses and challenges, the Valley has never ceased to be fertile in culture and creativity.
The techniques for transforming nature into art — clay, cotton, wood, and plant fibers — were passed down from generation to generation like precious secrets. Until the 1970s, the region remained largely isolated, with few roads, limited electricity, scarce schools, and minimal public services. Life was sustained through small-scale farming, animal husbandry, and above all, craftsmanship. Human hands built homes, shaped clay utensils, carved doors, benches, and wood-burning stoves. Every object emerged from necessity, but also from a deep sense of belonging.
Beginning in the 1970s, public initiatives such as the creation of CODEVALE opened new paths for the region. The Valley’s handicrafts began traveling throughout Brazil, appearing in fairs, exhibitions, and markets in cities such as Belo Horizonte, Rio de Janeiro, and São Paulo. It was through this movement that Izabel’s iconic doll-shaped water jars gained new meanings: they ceased to be merely domestic objects and became symbols of cultural strength, dignity, beauty, and creative genius born even under difficult conditions.
This collective strength spread throughout the region, bringing autonomy and livelihood to many families through local artistic production across different communities of the Valley.
Today, the Jequitinhonha Valley remains a reference in Brazilian ceramics, recognized for the beauty, sustainability, and cultural richness created by its people.
Dona Izabel Mendes da Cunha
Dona Izabel was undoubtedly one of those rare people who seem born to open paths and transform the history of an entire territory. The daughter of rural workers, she was born in Córrego Novo, a rural community in Itinga, Minas Gerais (1924–2014). From her mother, Dona Vitalina, she inherited the ancestral knowledge of transforming clay into objects essential for her family’s survival: pots, pans, and water jars.
Even as a child, she would shape small pieces of clay while watching her mother work. From those tiny hands emerged simple toys: little oxen, miniature pans, and small dolls. At that time, owning a plastic doll was unimaginable for a child in the Jequitinhonha Valley. She often said she dreamed of having a store-bought doll but never knew what it was like to play with one. It was from this unfulfilled childhood desire that her wish to create her own dolls was born — dolls made from the clay the earth itself provided.
Over time, she married, moved to Santana do Araçuaí, had four children, and became widowed at an early age. To support her family, she traveled long distances carrying pottery on her head or on the backs of donkeys, selling her work along the Rio–Bahia highway.
It was through this life of hard labor combined with imagination that Dona Izabel became a master of herself. Inspired by the forms of water jars and clay filters, she began creating large figurative dolls that told stories of everyday life: mothers, brides, women with strong features and distant gazes — figures that seemed to carry something of all of us within them. Through her talent, she transformed everyday domestic objects into sculptures that today inhabit museums, books, and collections throughout Brazil and around the world.
The workshop attached to her home was a place of simplicity and generosity. There, using only old knives, corn cobs, wooden bowls, and improvised brushes, she shaped her pieces with patience and inventiveness. When people asked how she had learned, she would answer: “I taught myself.” But in truth, she taught many others: neighbors, sons, daughters, and friends — including my mother and my aunt — who found in ceramics both autonomy and affection.
Dona Izabel was recognized during her lifetime as one of the greatest artists of Brazilian folk ceramics. She received the UNESCO Handicrafts Prize for Latin America and the Caribbean, the Brazilian Order of Cultural Merit, and even had her works featured on Brazilian postage stamps. Yet perhaps her greatest achievement was this: showing that even under the harshest conditions, it is possible to create beauty and dignity with one’s own hands.
I am proud to say that I, too, was shaped by the light of this generous master artist. Every doll I create carries a part of her wisdom — the wisdom that taught us that clay is not merely matter, but memory, possibility, and living history.
My Technique
The technique I learned comes from Dona Izabel and from many generations before her. It is a way of working that brings together patience, memory, and freedom. Although there are recurring stages — such as preparing the clay, sculpting, drying, painting, and firing — each artist creates their own path through these processes.
Dona Izabel used to say that technique was never a fixed recipe. She herself learned through gesture and experience, experimenting, making mistakes, and inventing solutions with the few resources she had. She sculpted her pieces on top of a wooden bowl with a board placed over it, creating a simple handmade wheel that allowed her to slowly rotate the doll while observing every detail. She used old knives, corn cobs, pieces of gourd, cloth scraps, and whatever else was within reach. Everything became an extension of her imagination.
This way of creating was passed down to other women — and later to me — as a living knowledge that each person adapts in their own way. The technique is both learned knowledge and intuition. There is a shared foundation that connects us, but there is also space for each artist’s personality to emerge through line, form, painting, and finishing.
In my own process, everything begins with the choice of clay. I collect it from my grandmother’s backyard or from neighboring lands, always respecting the rhythm of the earth and the way it wishes to be gathered. Afterwards, I clean and prepare the material until it reaches the ideal consistency for sculpting.
During the creation process, I use simple tools inherited from this tradition: small knives for carving details, corn cobs for smoothing surfaces, cloths for creating textures, and above all, my hands to feel every curve. Our greatest tools are our hands and our imagination.
The colors I use come directly from the earth. I prepare natural earth pigments collected from the region — Toá, Tabatinga, and other natural clays. I often combine three or more different types until I achieve the tone I am searching for. When applied to the dry surface of the piece, these pigments already carry life, but it is only after firing that they reveal their definitive color. The fire plays its role: it transforms, reveals, and sometimes surprises.
The firing takes place in a wood-burning kiln that takes approximately twelve hours to reach 800°C (1472°F). When I open the kiln, I feel the same joy I felt as a child: it is the moment when each doll fully reveals itself.
Preserving this technique is my commitment to the past and also my way of creating something new in the present. Every piece that leaves my hands carries respect for those who came before me, along with the certainty that clay will always be able to tell new stories.