APPLIED AND INDUSTRIAL ART COLLECTION

 Canon-type sundial with the emblem of the Armament and Building Engineers Corps
Canon-type sundial with the emblem of the Armament and Building Engineers Corps

The collection of applied and industrial art stands out mainly in the ensembles of donations and contributions from private collectors. Within this field is worth mentioning the figure of Antonio Romero Ortiz, a Spanish politician, lawyer and journalist who gathered a remarkable collection of curiosities that are today a part of the permanent collection of the Museum. We make an emphasis on the oriental art works, Chinese and Japanese, as the Japanese Mirror in Bronze from the Edo Period. Within this heterogeneous collection we can also find excellent examples of Saxon porcelain, as the delicate piece Declaration of Love, as well as samples of the ivory-carving art, like the small devotional triptych, of Italian manufacture, with an impeccable neat finish.
Porcelain from the nearby Talavera is also represented in the Museum’s collections; a plate decorated in cobalt blue, with a heraldic decorative motif showing the emblem of Artillery and signed at El Carmen Pottery Factory, is worth mentioning. Many of the items kept in this collection are a reflection of the most brilliant times of production of the so called Artistic Workshop of the Firearms Factory of Toledo; some of them took part in World’s Fairs and achieved great acknowledgement, as in the case of a historicist bargueño desk decorated with reliefs on the front and an exquisitely detailed finish, imitating the models of Castilian desks from 16th and 17th centuries. This piece won the extraordinary award at the Ibero-American Exhibition of 1920  in Seville and summarizes how high the bars were set in these Artistic Workshops.
The collections of applied arts also include curiosities linked to the Spanish military, as the General Zarco del Valle y Huet’s magnifier, rectangular and with a golden chain, the cylindrical tin case belonging to Private Casabon Vinuesa (1872) which served him to carry an absolute permit to be discharged from the service, or a sundial cannon from 1850 with the emblem of the Armament and Construction Engineers Corps carved on it.
 

 

Images

  • Magnifying glassLupa

    APPLIED ARTS
    APPLIED ARTS

  • Saxony porcelain

    APPLIED ARTS
    APPLIED ARTS

  • China dish from the El Carmen Factory, Talavera de la Reina (Toledo)

    APPLIED ARTS
    APPLIED ARTS

  • Bargueño (portable desk) from Toledo Arms Factory’s artistic workshop

    APPLIED ARTS
    APPLIED ARTS