Spanish colonial furniture of the West Indies

Magazine Antiques, March, 2002 by Michael Connors

By the beginning of the twentieth century the representative symbols of luxury and ostentation had come full circle. The wealthiest families of the Spanish Antilles were again importing luxurious furniture from abroad, including carved and gilded furniture in the baroque style; gilded, marble-topped tables in the Louis XVI style (see Pl. XX); boulle work objects in the style of Napoleon III; and Second Empire revival furniture with brass inlay and gilt-bronze mounts. Although local furniture makers continued to make variations on the imports (see Pl. XVIII), their output was far less grand than the prototypes and thus more suited for the growing middle class (see Pl. XIX), who, with the decline of the sugar economy, became the primary consumers of furniture.

MICHAEL CONNORS is an adjunct professor of arts at New York University and also teaches courses in furniture at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. His Caribbean Elegance has recently been published by Horny N. Abrams.

(1.) Quoted in John Horace Parry and Philip Manderson Sherlock, A Short History of the West Indies, 2d ed. (Macmillan, London, 1968), P.3.

(2.) Marfa Luisa Lobo Montalvo, Havana: History and Architecture of a Romantic city (Monacelli Press, New York, 2000), p. 72.

(3.) Robert Wemyss Symonds, "Early Imports of Mahogany for Furniture," Connoisseur, vol. 94, no. 398 (October 1934), p.215.

(4.) Bryden Bordley Hyde, Bermuda's Antique Furniture and Silver (Bermuda National Trust, Hamilton, 1971), p. 106.

(5.) See Michael Connors, "Danish West Indian furniture," The Magazine ANTIQUES vol. 156, no. 3 (September 1999), pp. 338-347.

(6.) Llilian Llanes, The Houses of Old Cuba (Thames and Hudson, New York, 1999), p. 158.

(7.) Quoted ibid., p. 172.

(8.) Adolfo de Hostos. Historia de San Juan, ciudad murada: ensayo acerca del proceso de la civilizacion en la ciudad Espanola de San Juan Bautista de Puerto Rico, 1521-1898 (Instituto de Cultura Puertorriquena, San Juan, 1966), pp. 519-521.

(9.) J. E. Mason and Company, Chairs and Furniture (New York, 1881), p. 3.