Unidentified artists
Herb Box (Yerbera)circa 1775-1790

On view:

Geffen Galleries, South American Symbolic Universes

Carved wooden lidded box with a domed, ribbed lid, densely relief-carved body, engraved silver-toned metal front panel with keyhole, and four crouching figural feet

Carved wooden box with quatrefoil-shaped lid open to reveal a divided interior; exterior densely carved with foliate and figural motifs, raised on four sculpted feet depicting crouching figures; silver-toned metal lock plate, hinges, and interior brackets with floral engraving.

Carved wooden casket with domed lid, raised on small feet, covered in dense low-relief scrolling foliage. A grotesque mask face centers the front panel flanked by metal hinge straps with floral repoussé work. A small standing human figure forms the front clasp. Traces of polychrome pigment in reddish-brown and gray-green remain throughout.

Repoussé metal vessel in the form of a scallop shell, with radiating fluted ribs and dense acanthus scroll decoration in high relief; small figural feet at base and a foliate finial at top; warm brown and silver patina throughout.

Artist or Maker: Unidentified artists
Title: Herb Box (Yerbera)
Place Made: Bolivia, possibly Moxos or Chiquitos
Date Made: circa 1775-1790
Medium: Wood and silver
Dimensions: 7 1/4 × 8 1/2 × 9 1/4 in. (18.4 × 21.6 × 23.5 cm)
Credit Line: Purchased with funds provided by the Bernard and Edith Lewin Collection of Mexican Art Deaccession Fund
Accession Number: M.2007.30
Classification: Furnishings
Collecting Area: Latin American Art
Curatorial Notes: Known today as herb boxes (yerberas) or coca boxes (coqueras), these shell-shaped containers were part of elite viceregal households in the southern Andes and highland Peru. The boxes were designed to store yerba maté leaves to brew tea, and perhaps also coca leaves and other substances, which accounts for their interior partitions. Densely ornamented, these examples were created by Indigenous carvers of the Jesuit missions of Moxos and Chiquitos, in present-day Bolivia.

From exhibition Archive of the World, 2022 (for more information see the catalogue entries by Ilona Katzew and Luis Eduardo Wuffarden in the accompanying publication, cats. nos. 81–82, pp. 316–25)
Provenance: Lord and Lady Hesketh, Easton Neston Estate, Northamptonshire, United Kingdom; Sotheby’s, London, May 17–19, 2005, lot 1557; Simois Gestión de Arte SL, Madrid, 2005; LACMA, 2007.
Selected 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.
Ilona Katzew, “Special Things: Boxes in Spanish America,” Unframed, July 20, 2022, https://unframed.lacma.org/2022/07/20/special-things-boxes-spanish-america.
Selected Exhibition History: Contested Visions in the Spanish Colonial World. November 6, 2011 - January 29, 2012
Contested Visions in the Spanish Colonial World. November 6, 2011 - January 29, 2012
Archive of the World: Art and Imagination in Spanish America, 1500–1800. June 12, 2022 - October 30, 2022
Archive of the World: Art and Imagination in Spanish America, 1500–1800. June 12, 2022 - October 30, 2022
Archive of the World: Art and Imagination in Spanish America, 1500–1800. October 20, 2023 - January 28, 2024
Archive of the World: Art and Imagination in Spanish America, 1500–1800. October 20, 2023 - January 28, 2024
Archive of the World: Art and Imagination in Spanish America, 1500–1800. June 22, 2024 - September 08, 2024
Archive of the World: Art and Imagination in Spanish America, 1500–1800. June 22, 2024 - September 08, 2024

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