THREE LOCKS CHEST. WALNUT. SPAIN, 17TH CENTURY.

Chest with three locks and drawers. Walnut wood. Spain, 17th century. Rectangular chest with a flat lid, unique for its format and constitution. It has a decoration on the front and the two sides with mouldings resembling architectural elements in the corners, a fine moulding bordering the bolts and making similar designs on the sides (creating ogee and lobed shapes); a succession of mouldings in the lower area, combined at the front with an architectural element; a band below in which the three drawers are presented, with a fluted front and iron handles; and a trimmed skirt over the legs of the piece of furniture. Inside, there is a partition on one side, occupying the entire side: from bottom to top, three drawers with access outside this space, this front decorated with mouldings resembling drawers, and an access with a flat lid with a hinge on the upper part of the partition; it should be noted that inside there is a space and a piece of wood that slides, revealing a normal drawer with access without moving the wood and another smaller, secret drawer, only accessible by moving this wood. The keys present marked differences between themselves and the usual decoration in this type of pieces of the period. Chests with three locks are also known as “Town Hall” or “Council” chests, because both these and those with two keys were often used by religious, military or civil organisations to store valuable objects and documents, securing them by giving a key to each person in charge (as many people as there were locks and keys), so that they had to come together to open the cabinet. In many places in the Spanish territories, it was used as a municipal archive, following laws inherited from a pragmatic of 9 June 1500 with which the Catholic Monarchs obliged the Councils of their territories to build town halls, prisons and have a chest of privileges and deeds. Despite having been abundant in their time, not many examples have reached us because they have fallen into disuse and have been replaced. Compare with that of the Council of Villafranca de la Marisma (Los Palacios y Villafranca, Seville), that of Valdipiélago (León), that of Matapozuelos (Valladolid), that of the Cabildo of Buenos Aires in Argentina (18th century, following previous models), etc. Stylistically speaking, Castilian chests are usually much simpler on the outside and do not usually have drawers on the outside like the ones in this piece. There are known examples from both Spain and northern Europe with mouldings on the outside that deviate and draw shapes on the lock shields. What is clearly exceptional is the presence of drawers on the outside and the architectural decoration mentioned above.

· Size: 140x68x94 cms