Chest (Baulito)

* Nearly 20,000 images of artworks the museum believes to be in the public domain are available to download on this site. Other images may be protected by copyright and other intellectual property rights. By using any of these images you agree to LACMA's Terms of Use.

Special Things: Boxes in Spanish America

Opening a box invariably brings about a sense of wonder and discovery—even when we suspect what is inside. Small and portable, beautifully made boxes are designed to enclose special things; their exterior mirrors the precious commodities they contain, which are often kept under lock and key.

Chest (Baulito)

Mexico, possibly Puebla, late 17th or early 18th century
Furnishings; Accessories
Wood, metal, tortoiseshell, and bone
10 3/8 × 13 1/2 × 7 3/4 in. (26.4 × 34.3 × 19.7 cm)
Purchased with funds provided by the Bernard and Edith Lewin Collection of Mexican Art Deaccession Fund (M.2015.142.2)
Not currently on public view

Curator Notes

Luxury boxes were highly prized throughout Spanish America.

...

Luxury boxes were highly prized throughout Spanish America. Traditionally, this type of intricate geometric decoration was viewed as a byproduct of the Mudéjar style that originated with Arab craftsmen living in Spain between the eleventh and fifteenth centuries, which subsequently traveled to Mexico with the Spanish colonists. Recent scholarship, however, has argued for a more complex origin of similar patterns grounded on a wide range of Western-European sources.


Ilona Katzew, 2015
More...

Provenance

Private collection, Paris; Galerie Terrades, Paris, 2005; LACMA, 2015.

Label

This chest incorporates bone and tortoiseshell inlay into fine geometric designs, employing a technique known as embutido.

...

This chest incorporates bone and tortoiseshell inlay into fine geometric designs, employing a technique known as embutido. The eight-pointed star resembles decorative panels found on the episcopal seat of the choir of the Puebla Cathedral. Although this type has been generically described as “Mudejar” (a term used to refer to persistence of Islamic art in Spain after the Christian conquest), similar designs circulated in European gardening manuals that were referenced by a range of artists and craftspeople, suggesting that the patterns of transference was more complex.


From exhibition Archive of the World, 2022 (for more information see the catalogue entry by Patricia Díaz Cayeros in the accompanying publication, cat. no. 77, pp. 305–09)
More...

Bibliography

  • Katzew, Ilona, ed. Archive of the World: Art and Imagination in Spanish America, 1500–1800: Highlights from LACMA’s Collection. Exh. Cat. Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art; New York: DelMonico Books/D.A.P., 2022.
  • Katzew, Ilona, ed. Archive of the World: Art and Imagination in Spanish America, 1500–1800: Highlights from LACMA’s Collection. Exh. Cat. Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art; New York: DelMonico Books/D.A.P., 2022.
  • Díaz Cayeros, Patricia. “Mobiliario novohispano con diseños geométricos: maderas, carey y hueso.” Res Mobils. Revista internacional de investigación en mobiliario y objetos decorativos 10, no 13 (2021):31–53.
  • Ilona Katzew, “Special Things: Boxes in Spanish America,” Unframed, July 20, 2022, https://unframed.lacma.org/2022/07/20/special-things-boxes-spanish-america.

More...

Exhibition history

  • Archive of the World: Art and Imagination in Spanish America, 1500–1800 Los Angeles, CA, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, June 12, 2022 - October 30, 2022
  • Archive of the World: Art and Imagination in Spanish America, 1500–1800 Nashville, TN, Frist Art Museum, October 20, 2023 - January 28, 2024