Francisco Brennand, born in 1927 into an Irish immigrant family and now considered Brazil’s greatest ceramicist, revitalized his family’s abandoned tile factory to create his own line of decorative ceramic tiles. The expansive indoor and outdoor space in Várzea, 11km west of central Recife, is now mostly dedicated to his enormous and fascinating oeuvre, which ranges across painting, tile work and hundreds of highly original sculptures. It's best reached by taxi from Boa Viagem and visited in combination with Instituto Ricardo Brennand.
The grounds, set amid thick Atlantic rainforest, include a couple of temples, Moorish arches and all sorts of surreal sculptures, including rows of contorted busts and a garden of bizarre sexualized earthworms.
An economic route to the museum is to catch a CDU/Caxangá bus (R$3.20) from Boa Viagem to the end of its route on Rua Acadêmico Hélio Ramos, then a taxi round-trip from the bus stop to both here and Instituto Ricardo Brennand (around 10km in total) for around R$80 to R$100. From Boa Viagem, a one-way taxi costs R$45 to R$50, or allow around R$150 to R$200 to visit both institutions (including wait time).
