CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 9/2/2015

Made in the Americas

In "By the Boatload: Receiving and Recreating the Arts of Asia," her chapter in MFA Publications' eye-opening Made in the Americas: The New World Discovers Asia, Denver Art Museum curator of Spanish Colonial Art Donna Pierce writes, "Some of the most highly valued items of furniture from Asia were those polychromed and finished with a lacquered surface, using a technique purported to have been invented in China but expanded and perfected in Japan... Another type of furniture imported from Asia was decorated with inlay, including Japanese examples inlaid with mother-of-pearl on a black lacquer ground as well as tortoiseshell and mother-of-pearl pieces from Goa and Gujarat. Spanish-Moorish traditions of inlaid and marquetry furniture merged with Asian examples in the hands of Latin American craftsmen, who created exquisite and distinctive inlay work in a variety of woods, ivory, bone, silver, tortoiseshell and mother of pearl. These pieces were produced in regions throughout the colonies, including Puebla, Campeche and Durango in Mexico; Lima in Peru; Quito in Ecuador; Bogotá in Colombia; Caracas and Cumaná in Venezuela; and Guatemala and Paraguay." Featured example is a cabinet produced in Lima between 1680 and 1700.