Cláudio Passos, “the Wizard of Baixa”
A winner of several national and international competitions, Cláudio Passos has a prestigious career in Portuguese goldsmithing. In 2023, he created a piece of sacred art from scratch, titled the “Holy Trinity Rosary,” to present to Pope Francis ahead of his visit to Portugal for World Youth Day. At 76 years old, he confesses to JoiaPro that the work was the result of cheating death on two occasions.
Why the nickname “the Wizard of Baixa”? Because of a work I created for the J&B competition in 1992, a series of seven pieces. They are triangles that rotate to the left and to the right, forming a circle—that’s where the magic happens. People would look at it and their jaws would drop; they said it looked like Kermit the Frog. Even I don’t know for sure how many different figures can come out of it. From then on, the name stuck: the Wizard of Baixa.
Was that the main award you received in your career? No, I’ve had several over the years, including international ones. I even represented Portugal in Switzerland. The crowns for the Miss Portugal pageant, for example, were all created by me. I have a characteristic that is rare in this profession: often I don’t even draw, I go straight to the piece. And almost everything I make has movement; there is a connection between the person who creates it and the person who later wears it. In goldsmithing, there are many who copy. I don’t.
So let’s go back in time. Master Passos started in this profession at age 11. Did your passion for goldsmithing spark back then? It happened by chance. My cousin was an apprentice, running errands, and he told my father that I had talent. I was working at a haberdashery at the time… I would leave school and go straight there so I wouldn’t be out on the streets. From the age of 14, the association had an agreement with the António Arroio School, and that’s when I had the luck of finding an exceptional master: Master Guilherme Marques. I made countless pieces during that time—I even made 60.
Read the full interview in the latest edition of JoiaPro.
17 de June, 2026
Interviews
