Chest design from old Spanish Southwest, New Mexico, circa 1820

About this postcard

The design shows a rider in a red jacket and yellow trousers on a black horse at left, a woman in a blue ruffled dress at center, and a woman in a tan striped skirt at right, framed by stylized floral and wave borders on a red ground. The caption identifies it as a chest design from the old Spanish Southwest, made in New Mexico about 1820. Painted furniture was part of the region's Spanish colonial decorative tradition, and the Index of American Design recorded such early objects in watercolor during the 1930s and early 1940s.