Handmade ceramics from the sugar mills of Chapada dos Guimarães in Mato Grosso and dating from 1790 to 1890 varied according to the African cultural dynamic. Records list some 33 'nations' present in the region from 1790 to 1870 , with around 50 per cent referring to Central Africa. The proportion of Africans decreased from 60 to 40 per cent from 1790 to 1870 , falling to 20 per cent between 1870 and 1888, with Benguela, Mina, Kongo and Mozambique each listed as majority 'nations' in different periods. Records from the turn of the nineteenth century list some fourteen 'nations', with the decorated fragments found accounting for less than a quarter of the total. The peak in diversity occurred from 1830 to 1850, when 28 African 'nations' were recorded as present in the area. This statistic was directly related to the peak in ceramic quantity and decorative diversity, as was seen in around a third of the samples dating to that period. In the final third of the nineteenth century, the frequency of decorated ceramics fell considerably, accounting for only 10 per cent by the end of the century. In this period, mixed-race populations known as crioulos and pardos became the majority, accounting for around 80 per cent of the enslaved population. These correlations suggest that the decorated ceramics found in Chapada dos Guimarães were of greater cultural relevance to Africans than to Afro-Brazilians (De Souza and Symanski, 2009).  
Dominant motifs at the turn of the nineteenth century were combinations of zigzags and diamonds, similar to those still applied in the mid-twentieth century to ceramics, ornaments and in body scarification by the Ovimbundu