Bordallo Pinheiro Garden _ Lisbon _ Portugal

text by JOÃO BASTO photography by GIASCO BERTOLI   Formerly known as Jardim do Bucho, the Bordallo Pinheiro Garden is not exactly what you would expect to find surrounding the Palacio Pimenta, a somewhat austere 18th-century museum dedicated to the history of Lisbon. Set adjacent to the palace, but secluded behind high walls and reached via sinuous alleyways leading from a Baroque central pond, lies one of the most extraordinary environmental interventions in the city — an extravagantly surreal collection of thousands of late 19th-century objets d’art. Made from glazed earthenware, these naturalistic replicas of mammals, reptiles, shellfish, crustaceans, and birds make up only a small part of a collection of thousands of pieces originally created by Rafael Bordalo Pinheiro, a vibrant and prolific 19th-century Portuguese caricaturist and pioneer of the country’s Arts & Crafts movement. Inspired by his counterparts in Britain, a middle-aged Pinheiro moved away from Lisbon to open…