85 – Traditional New Mexican Furniture Making with Andrew Gonzales

So I know in the beginning of the article, a chunk of the beginning of the article, you're talking about tracing through the historical developments, some of the influences that came together as what we know of as traditional new Mexican furniture.

Could you trace a little bit of that history? What were the influences? What developed to bring this furniture to the place that it is now?

Yeah, so I'll try to be as brief as I can because I could probably ramble on about this for a long time.

But kind of the shortest cliff notes of it, right, is New Mexican furniture obviously evolved out of a tradition of furniture forms and designs in Spain.

And I go a little bit more in depth than that in the article, so maybe I'll leave that to the listeners to read through that.

But the maybe key aspects to draw from there is there was a lot of confluences and maybe influence of Arabic design in Spanish furniture that's maybe unique in comparison to other Western European furniture traditions.

And I bring that up just because as those carpenters, joiners, cabinet makers left Spain for North America and brought that over, I think it allowed them to be a little bit more open to some of the ornamentation and decorative motifs that they encountered from the indigenous populations that they settled with, or at least in New Mexico.

And so you get these carpenters leaving in the 16th, 17th century from Spain.

They, you know, first in Mexico and then start settling further north, get into what is now known as New Mexico.

And in kind of 1680, I think there's this watershed moment in which the indigenous population actually stages a successful revolt, kicks the Spanish out for about 40 years.

They return.

And there's this realization in that territory in specific that I think creates this unique bubble that maybe is the genesis for a lot of New Mexican furniture in that maybe unique into other colonies in North America.

There's a lot more recognition of a symbiotic or interdependent relationship between the European colonists and the indigenous populations.

They outnumber them for one.

you know there wasn't the seven famed cities of gold that was up there so that you know the royal interest in the territory was pretty minimal so there was not a lot of resources being sent to these colonists so they realized that they needed to live together at that point in time the indigenous populations got a lot more relaxed in their ability to practice their own beliefs the guild system even encouraged their apprenticeship and to be able to be master carpenters and so what you find a little bit before, but for sure from then on out, is the kind of increasing presence of indigenous ornamentation and motifs in New Mexican furniture.

You have these Spanish forms, kind of a priest chair, friar chair, these kind of medieval style coffers and things that you might find in Europe.

But you're seeing more geometric symbology being adorned on the chests and the chairs that more mimic the pottery from these indigenous people in the area, amongst other things.

And so you kind of start to get this commingling of meaning and of craft traditions between the Spanish forms and kind of local indigenous decoration and kind of how they're ornamented.

Yeah.

So I know in the beginning of the article, a chunk of the beginning of the article, you're talking about tracing through the historical developments, some of the influences that came together as what we know of as traditional new Mexican furniture.

Could you trace a little bit of that history? What were the influences? What developed to bring this furniture to the place that it is now?

Yeah, so I'll try to be as brief as I can because I could probably ramble on about this for a long time.

But kind of the shortest cliff notes of it, right, is New Mexican furniture obviously evolved out of a tradition of furniture forms and designs in Spain.

And I go a little bit more in depth than that in the article, so maybe I'll leave that to the listeners to read through that.

But the maybe key aspects to draw from there is there was a lot of confluences and maybe influence of Arabic design in Spanish furniture that's maybe unique in comparison to other Western European furniture traditions.

And I bring that up just because as those carpenters, joiners, cabinet makers left Spain for North America and brought that over, I think it allowed them to be a little bit more open to some of the ornamentation and decorative motifs that they encountered from the indigenous populations that they settled with, or at least in New Mexico.

And so you get these carpenters leaving in the 16th, 17th century from Spain.

They, you know, first in Mexico and then start settling further north, get into what is now known as New Mexico.

And in kind of 1680, I think there's this watershed moment in which the indigenous population actually stages a successful revolt, kicks the Spanish out for about 40 years.

They return.

And there's this realization in that territory in specific that I think creates this unique bubble that maybe is the genesis for a lot of New Mexican furniture in that maybe unique into other colonies in North America.

There's a lot more recognition of a symbiotic or interdependent relationship between the European colonists and the indigenous populations.

They outnumber them for one.

you know there wasn't the seven famed cities of gold that was up there so that you know the royal interest in the territory was pretty minimal so there was not a lot of resources being sent to these colonists so they realized that they needed to live together at that point in time the indigenous populations got a lot more relaxed in their ability to practice their own beliefs the guild system even encouraged their apprenticeship and to be able to be master carpenters and so what you find a little bit before, but for sure from then on out, is the kind of increasing presence of indigenous ornamentation and motifs in New Mexican furniture.

You have these Spanish forms, kind of a priest chair, friar chair, these kind of medieval style coffers and things that you might find in Europe.

But you're seeing more geometric symbology being adorned on the chests and the chairs that more mimic the pottery from these indigenous people in the area, amongst other things.

And so you kind of start to get this commingling of meaning and of craft traditions between the Spanish forms and kind of local indigenous decoration and kind of how they're ornamented.

Yeah.