FORTY EIGHT YEARS IN THE SERVICE OF THE CRAFT

My journey began at age 14 in the village of Sintra, as an apprentice to the master upholsterer Sr. Ferreira. It was there, in a workshop trusted with the restoration of treasures for the Palácio da Pena, that I learned the ‘internal truth’ of furniture. My days were spent stripping back royal pieces to their bare frames, uncovering the secrets of 19th-century construction before learning to rebuild them.

That foundation — laid in the workshops and palace interiors of Portugal — has guided every commission since. When an 1837 Australian Colonial Cedar Sofa arrived carrying its original horsehair and hand-tied lashings intact, Carlos saw not a repair job but a document. The task was not to replace what time had done, but to honour it.