On the south-west edge of the Sao Paulo connurbation, Embu maintains an identity distinct from the urban sprawl of its enormous neighbour. The centro histórico is a series of cobbled streets with brightly painted stuccoed houses, and shops and restaurants serving the tourist trade. Elsewhere in town there are collections of shops selling ‘arty’ furniture – heavy wooden mock-rustic chairs, kitchen and console tables, wrought iron chandeliers, gates and panels, pool-side furniture, sculptures made from scrap car parts – but in the centre the work is finer.

The shops and stalls sell a wide array of paintings – naive, realist, Brasilian and European landscapes, abstract and op-art – and sculpture, all kinds of handcrafts, bric-a-brac, food and drink, semi-precious stones and jewellery, carpets, and antiques. The better quality antiques, some as early as eighteenth century, come from the fazendas or large farms – Marcelo Aguila has a tall library bookcase…