Lot 324

17th C. Spanish Walnut Coffer - Mudejar Lid & Plateresque Body

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Lot 324
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17th C. Spanish Walnut Coffer - Mudejar Lid & Plateresque Body
17th C. Spanish Walnut Coffer - Mudejar Lid & Plateresque Body
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17th C. Spanish Walnut Coffer - Mudejar Lid & Plateresque Body

Estimate: $1,000 - $1,500

Current Bid: $500

(1 Bid)
by Artemis Fine Arts
June 25, 2026 9:00 AM MDT
Live Auction
686 S. Taylor Avenue
Suite 108
Louisville, CO, US 80027

Western Europe, Iberian Peninsula, Spain, Mudejar and Plateresque traditions, ca. 1575–1699 CE. A lid of compass-drawn lacery crowns this walnut coffer, its surface a close lattice of interlocking circles resolving into six-petaled rosettes and quatrefoils, the whole bound within a beaded border set with carved roundels. Hinged at the rear to lift on its long axis, the lid opens upon a body that speaks a wholly different grammar. A running wave-scroll guilloche encircles the upper register, parting at center around a scrolled cartouche and keyhole, beneath which slender arcaded flutes descend into a bold range of convex gadroons above a cabled plinth. A lockable strongbox for coin, deeds, and jewels, it kept a household's portable wealth answerable to a single key. Size: 13.2" W x 8.5" H x 8.2" D (33.5 cm W x 21.6 cm H x 20.8 cm D).

The corners are secured by wooden pegs, the hand-shop joinery of an age that trusted oak and walnut pins over iron, and the carving throughout carries the small irregularities of the gouge. Two visual languages share one small architecture: the geometric laceria of the lid, an Islamic-derived idiom that outlived al-Andalus to flourish in the workshops of Christian Iberia, and the gadrooned, guilloched classicism of the body, the Plateresque vocabulary Spain borrowed from Renaissance Italy and made unmistakably its own. Their union is a Spanish fingerprint, the Moorish past and the Renaissance present cut into the same panel of nogal.

The single keyhole in its scrolled cartouche was the object's entire reason for being, a private vault sized for a tabletop. Within, an olive-green velvet lining set down on hand-applied adhesive cushioned whatever its owner judged worth securing. That lining is itself a small chapter of the object's biography, an older furnishing laid by hand rather than a modern refit, very likely added when the box passed from working security to cherished keepsake.

That a craftsman could hold two centuries of taste in his hands at once, laying Granada's geometry over Florence's moldings without a quarrel between them, is the quiet genius of Spanish furniture in this age. The Mudejar carver had been gone from court patronage for generations, yet his compass and gouge persisted in the trade, faithfully describing the same flowering circles long after anyone remembered to call them foreign.

Provenance: ex-private collection, Fairhaven, Massachusetts, USA, collected from 2010 to 2015

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Item # 203233

  • Condition: Fair. Missing locking mechanism. Repair to middle of front rim. Nicks, chips, and abrasions, as well as stable fissures in areas. Wear, fraying, and some discoloring to fabric on interior and on underside of base. Otherwise, nice remaining detail and rich patina throughout.

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Bid Increments
From: To: Increments:
$0 $299 $25
$300 $999 $50
$1,000 $1,999 $100
$2,000 $4,999 $250
$5,000 $9,999 $500
$10,000 $19,999 $1,000
$20,000 $49,999 $2,500
$50,000 $99,999 $5,000
$100,000 $199,999 $10,000
$200,000 + $20,000