17 interesting items you can buy in Brazil (Part 2)

Havaiana National flip-flops have become a global phenomenon, Havaianas is a distinct Brazilian brand and must be in the closet of any Brazilian. Although these sandals are sold around the world, buying them from the country of origin is a bit more special, not to mention cheaper. There are Havaianas stores dotted all over the big city with a variety of colorful models and styles. Bahian women Bahian women are actually decorations that are usually from Bahia and northern Brazil. Often painted in dark skin, they are sometimes described as thoughtful looking ahead when they place their hands on their cheeks. They were dressed in a typical Bahian dress – a large, ankle-length skirt bulging out at the hips and decorated with bright, cheerful colors. Brazilian Candy Brazil has a lot of delicious sweets. Some great sweets to buy include paçoca, a sweet-flavored nut-based sweet like Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup, pão de mel, a small

The toy makers from Abaetetuba

Softly-spoken Pirias is busy. He is preparing several items to take to a market and still needs to prepare for a workshop he will be hosting in a city that is hundreds of miles away from his hometown of Abaetetuba, in the state of Pará, extreme north of Brazil. Still, the artisan, real name José Plácido da Silva, finds a bit of time to chat to us. Abaetetuba is the home of toys made out of the pulp of miriti, a palm native to the north of the country and Pirias is the most recognized representative of this kind of craft in the whole of Brazil. The toy maker credits his fame and recent success – which includes a host of exhibitions and workshops across Brazil, as well as being picked as one of the few artisans to represent his state in the shops set up by the government during the

Brazilian craft we can only admire

At Gift Brazil, we aim to make genuine Brazilian artisan art and craft available to the world. This means that our team is always on the road, all over Brazil meeting with artisans and encouraging them to join our collective. Recently we were up in the extreme north of Brazil in Belém. Then we went to the extreme west of the country in the Pantanal, the largest tropical wetland in the entire world – very close to the border with Bolivia. Some of the artisans we meet are in very remote places, but we don’t have many requirements for including someone in the collective – the main requirement is that they are producing interesting products that we would like to showcase online! Sometimes, we meet artisans that produce great work, but we just cannot include them in the Gift Brazil collective because they don’t use email or other basic technologies. All orders