António Soares Franco, a distinguished antique collector was renown in his passion for decorative tiles.

His nephew, António Avillez, accompanied him many a time on his digressions to antique and scrap metal fairs hunting for relics. He acquired the same passion, which was later, refined through courses with Prof. Rafael Calado and Prof. Santos Simões to the point of becoming a collector himselt. He dedicated most of his time hunting for samples, which would constitute a valuable collection.
A large part of this collection can be seen today when visiting the cellars of Bacalhoa Wines of Portugal in Azeitão.

Finally the day was born when he made the decision to produce tiles himself in Vila Fresca de Azeitão which functions under the name of São Simão Arte.
In 1983, he invited two of his friends, Jaime Peralta and Álvaro Diniz, to enter into this venture and the three became equal partners. In 2006, two of the partners conceded their positions to António Avillez.
From the beginning there existed the preoccupation of maintaining fidelity to the ancestral factory where the acquisition of clay, drying, baking and painting was all manual.
Only the electric kilns differed to the traditional ones. Until this date, more than a million pieces have been sold, not only on the national market but also abroad. This year 16.000 tiles were commercialised into beautiful panels.

The craftsmanship and quality of our products distinguish our work from the majority of our competitors.

At our workshop visitors are welcome to observe all phases of production.
We accept orders to suit our client’s tasters within a short space of time (approximately a month).