By considering the network of producers and consumers of the pieces, Agostini expands the focus of his argument from the African heritage dimension to the relationship between ceramicists and their near and distant customers, and the entanglement of these individuals in a universe marked by African presence, thereby touching on the motivations linked to the production and consumption of these items. In the ceramicists' case, there may have been several motivations for producing vessels with these motifs, including cultural identification, aesthetic canons, economic interests and preconceptions about the spaces appropriate for use of the pieces. Consumers may have shared these ideas. In this sense, some may have been making direct comments on their identities by selecting 'scarified' ceramics. Others, meanwhile, may have considered such ceramics appropriate for marking, as one of the areas in which the activity of black female slaves was concentrated, both the kitchens in mansions and those  
in the homes of the lower levels of the population, which were composed of freed, crioulo and mixed-race people, who would not have had the economic means to purchase the fine crockery that was commonly found in their masters' homes and reflected European values and tastes.