Description
Mexican, 17th century, wood, leather, polychrome
Rectangular trunk of the form and size of a smal suitcase with hinged lid. Wood, covered with leather, cut and embossed with conventional foliage and animals and enriched with colours on a red ground. On the front, a roundel containing a standing lion(?) embracing a stylised flower or young tree. The lid has a scalloped border on three sides overlapping the join. On either side is an iron bail handle. On the front two iron loops are fixed, so that the lid can be secured with a padlock (missing). The inside is lined with silk brocade of the 17th century. Underneath coarse stitching is visible where the sections of leather are joined.
Comparable objects
See Gabriela Germana Roquez, "El mueble en el Peru en el siglo XVIII: estillos, gustos y costumbres de la elite colonial", in Anales del Museo de America 16 (2008), pp. 189-206, [fig.19]
https://dialnet.unirioja.es/descarga/articulo/3045477.pdf
accessed 26/9/2017
Comparable objects:
See Campos Carlés de Peña, María. A Surviving Legacy in Spanish America : Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century Furniture from the Viceroyalty of Peru (Ediciones El Viso, [2013]), p.146
Illustrates a similar trunk: Travel petaca, Museo de Arte de Lima collection, 18th c.