FThread by thread, pairs of bobbins at a time, eight kilos of cotton were unwound. For months, 150 pairs of hands composed 437 colorful squares with the incessant tinkling of wooden bobbins. The Largest Bobbin Lace in the World, coined by “Guinness World Records” in 2015, was then hoisted onto the Nau Quinhentista, at the Vila do Conde customs, for the public to see. Today, the lace mantle measuring more than 50 square meters is on display at the Bobbin Lace Museum in Vila do Conde, forming a tunnel to the lace makers’ workshop area. It is there that we find Goreti Sousa, a museum employee, and Ester Barros, who retired from the same position 13 years ago, but who continues to come daily. He only comes in the afternoons now, he says: “I’m not old enough to run anymore”. At 78 years old, Ester has spent 74 years working with bobbin lace. “There were no nurseries. We went to school in the morning and then came here”, he recalls. On the second floor of that building, an 18th century manor house, a lacemaking school has been operating for 106 years. Like Ester Barros, thousands of villagers there learned, from a very young age, the art that is the local’s ex-libris.