Mexican Hand Painted Lacquer Coaster Set in Lidded Box, Calla Lilies on Cobalt, c. 1980–2010

The Piece

A Mexican hand-painted lacquer coaster set, a round lidded box in deep cobalt blue holding a stack of matching coasters, every lid and disc painted freehand with a spray of white calla lilies, their trumpets shaded in gray and lavender, their spadices in yellow and orange, on long green stems that cross at the base. The lilies are the alcatraces of Diego Rivera and the Mexican flower market, and the painter has laid them on in the quick, confident strokes of a workshop that has painted them a thousand times, each coaster a little different from the next. The box is built up of layered board under a glossy lacquer finish, the lid fitting over a plain blue drum lined in black, and the coasters are the same construction, light in the hand, bright on a table and wipe-clean.

The set is complete with its box and coasters, in very good condition: the lacquer glossy and unchipped, the painting bright and unfaded, the lid seating well, with light wear to the edges and the usual soft marks of a few evenings' use on the coaster faces. Offered as found.

History & Provenance

Painted lacquer is one of the oldest crafts of Mexico, older than the Spanish. In the hill towns of Guerrero and Michoacán, at Olinalá, Uruapan and Pátzcuaro, the technique of coating gourds and wood with layers of chia oil, earth pigment and powdered stone and painting them in brilliant color was practiced before the Conquest and survived it, taking on European flowers, birds and borders and becoming by the twentieth century the signature folk art of the Mexican home and the Mexican market stall. The calla lily entered that vocabulary in the twentieth century through the painters: Rivera made the alcatraz the emblem of Mexican abundance in the murals and easel paintings of the 1920s and 1940s, the flower sellers of his canvases bent under armloads of white trumpets, and the lily passed from the gallery to the lacquer workshop, the tin frame, the embroidered blouse and the painted tray. Coaster sets in a lidded box were made for the tourist and export trade of the second half of the century, sold at the markets of Oaxaca, Cuernavaca and Mexico City and in the shops of the border towns, and carried home to kitchens and bar carts across the American Southwest.

The set is unmarked and offered as Mexican folk art lacquerware of the late twentieth century. The dating rests on the materials and the construction rather than style alone: the layered board body under a synthetic gloss lacquer, the freehand enamel painting and the black-lined box are consistent with workshop production between about 1980 and 2010.

Product Details

Why It Belongs in Your Home

Cobalt and white with a flash of yellow is a color story that works on almost any table, and a coaster set that lives in its own painted box is the kind of object that gets used every day and admired every time. It sits on a bar cart, a coffee table, a kitchen island or a patio table, holds a sweating glass of anything, and when the guests go home it closes up into a small blue drum that reads as a piece of folk art on a shelf. It belongs in a Southwest or Spanish Colonial house, a cottage kitchen, a collected modern living room with blue and white, or a dining room with talavera and tin. It is a natural hostess gift, a housewarming present or a souvenir for someone who misses Mexico. For a shop or designer client it is the bright, usable, giftable accent that sells on the first look.