Tenerife Art & crafts

The island's craft tradition is older than the Spanish conquest in at least one respect. Canarian pottery is still made without a wheel, coiled and smoothed by hand in the way the Guanches made it, and a handful of workshops in the north and the Teno hills continue to do it that way.

Around that sits the rest: palm and cane basketry, the openwork embroidery known as calados that the northern villages are known for, wood carving, and a contemporary studio scene in Santa Cruz and La Laguna working in ceramics, print and textiles. The craft centres in the northern towns are the reliable places to buy directly from the people who made the work.