Mate cuyano. Mendoza. XIX century.

Ovoid body, smooth, with a few furrows that decorate it and a mouth raised with a gold ferrule, resting on a cast shaft in the shape of a column, from which three branches are born with acanthus leaves, which are finished with a flower in two of them, and a dove in the rest. Below the shaft, a small cone-shaped base, chiseled with leaves, joins it to the plate of the salver with its raised and scalloped edges. The whole assembly rests on three cast legs. In the upper section of the container, engraved, the identity of its owner: Andrea Páez de Velásquez. Along with a light bulb. Measures. Mate. Height: 19 cm. Weight: 275 gr. Light bulb. Length: 21 cm / 8.26 in. Former collection Leopoldo Lugones.

This design, with its plate or salver in which the masses that accompanied the infusion were served, reached its greatest stylistic diffusion in the Cuyo region and also, in Chile, where the consumption of yerba mate was replaced by tea in the early republican times, not so in Mendoza and San Juan, where the most secluded residences were distinguished by their silver and porcelain tableware, including in the first the mate service with exemplars of particular design, such as the one we present now, probably made by a local goldsmith.

S.O.H-XII