Sewing Box (Almohadilla)

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A Mexican Sewing Box Full of Stories and Surprises

October 26, 2015

This special sewing box tells us many stories: stories of artistic exchange through the materials and motifs used, stories of life in Mexico through the vignettes that unfold in painted scenes, and stories of hidden secrets that we only discovered while installing the work in LACMA’s exhibition Archive of the World: Art and Imagination in Spanish America, 1500–1800.

Sewing Box (Almohadilla)

Unidentified artists

Mexico, Pátzcuaro (Michoacán), circa 1810

Furnishings; Accessories

Wood, lacquer, and paint

5 3/8 × 17 × 5 1/8 in. (13.7 × 43.2 × 13 cm)

Purchased with funds provided by the Bernard and Edith Lewin Collection of Mexican Art Deaccession Fund (M.2008.17)

Latin American Art

Not currently on public view

Provenance

Mr. and Mrs. Griscom, Maine; L’Antiquaire & the Connoisseur Inc., New York, c. 2007; LACMA, 2008.

Label

This lacquered sewing box combines Asian-inspired and European motifs, including willow trees, scenes of courtship, charity, and battle.

...

This lacquered sewing box combines Asian-inspired and European motifs, including willow trees, scenes of courtship, charity, and battle. The interior features miniature portraits of a man and a woman in fashionable European garb, while the lid depicts an Indigenous woman wearing a rebozo (shawl), signaling that this cherished luxury good that drew on multiple traditions was an unmistakable product of Mexico.

From exhibition Archive of the World, 2022 (for more information see the catalogue entry by Rachel Kaplan in the accompanying publication, cat. no. 75, pp. 298–301)

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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.
Rachel Kaplan, “A Mexican Sewing Box Full of Stories and Surprises,” Unframed, August 8, 2022, https://unframed.lacma.org/2022/08/08/mexican-sewing-box-full-stories-and-surprises.

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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