tourismPallarsSobirà
Among the various options of traditional crafts we can find in the shops, the most remarkable are the wooden saltcellars, the beçulles, the pottery, the baskets and natural farm food.
The Saltcellars, made from immemorial times in the same ancient houses, are usually made of pinewood and are decorated with time-honoured patterns carved on the outside. There were customarily used at home, but also the shepherds used them, on the one hand to keep the salt close to the hearth and on the other hand, to avoid dampness, so it did not get burnt or dirty.
The beçulles became mainly a shepherd's instrument. It consists of a cup-like container made with the flexible bark of birch trees, and it was employed to collect water from lakes and ponds, fountain springs and rivers, and even to warm up some liquids over the fire.
There had been two important potters in the region: one of them in Gerri de la Sal and the other one in Rialp. The former closed the pottery and the oven for good after the Spanish Civil War and the later closed it around the year 1962. Today the visitor may buy pottery reproductions of the most traditional pieces in the Ecomuseo of the Valleys of Àneu de: pitchers, plates, soup tureens, trays, sieves, and cheese-dishes...
Basket making was a traditional activity in the very farmhouses in the times when everybody used to make for themselves all that was needed to live by. Thus, baskets were woven with whatever material they had at hand: wicker, hazelnut branches... Nowadays one will find baskets made of hazelnut tree branches, employed to make breadbaskets, shopping baskets or hampers to collect fruits or mushrooms...
Finally, the never-ending choices of hand made farm food, specially related to dairy products (cheese, yoghurts), meat processing (dry sausages, pâtés, pâté bread), healing herbs and aromatic ones, fruit (jams and jellies, spirits), etc.
