Amolador of Lisbon
Meet António Magalhães Loureiro, Lisbon’s traveling knife and scissor sharpener.
Portugal always surprises me with traditions that defy the contemporary culture of automation and big business. And the traveling amoladors is one such traditional profession that still thrives in Lisbon.
Each amolador uses a distinctive whistle to announce their arrival in neighborhoods. And like 80 years ago, I called down the street for him when I heard the sing-song tune he played on his small pan flute.
António pushed his bike onto the sidewalk across from my apartment building and set down the back- wheel brace. I handed him my dulled knives and scissors.
Months prior, I had seen António walking down my street through my living room window. I quickly grabbed my camera and snapped a photo. Throughout the remaining winter months, I neither heard his whistle or saw him bent over the handlebars of his bike pushing his traveling workshop.
And the day I did hear his amolador’s tune, I rushed down the street with my dog, Fred, looking to look for him. Not only was I curious but I needed his services. I had stubbornly refused to buy a sharpener for my knives, resolute that I would have this done by the whistling amolador.
António told me that he’d been an amolador for 40 years. He lived across the Tejo River in Almada with his family. Originally from the Alentejo region, he often traveled back there and beyond to the Algarve and Spain and north into Porto.
Always the traveler, in 2019 he walked to Fatima, a popular pilgrimage in Portugal dedicated to the religious legend of the three children at the Cova da Iria who saw an apparition of the Virgin Mary in 1917. He remarked that the good company and the good food and wine made the trip “tão bom.”
Good company, food, and wine do make the journey as I can attest with my pilgrimage on the Camino de Santiago a few years ago.
What makes António’s work special is the attention he gives to his work - unhurried, careful but casual, and a lightness as he worked the blades across the grinding wheel, as he methodically pedaled. A seasoned artisan.
