The Portfolio of Spanish Colonial Design in New Mexico

The Portfolio of Spanish Colonial Design in New Mexico by Hall, E. Boyd. hardcover edition. ISBN: 9781890689216.

This is a reprint of a 1938 WPA project that produced fifty handcolored prints of existing Spanish Colonial pieces. There are prints of santos, altar screens, straw-work, tin-work, colcha, furniture, and decorative motifs. The portfolio has not been seen by many because after the project was completed it was recalled by the Federal Works Project as being too primitive. They just didn’t understand the process or the significance of the pieces. The accompanying booklet authored by E. Boyd has also been reprinted. The reprint is dedicated to Eliseo Rodríguez of Santa Fe, the lone remaining artist of the project. This is a long forgotten, but important, piece of New Mexico’s history. Boyd is credited with the text and the renderings for this portfolio, which was her first major work in the field of the Spanish Colonial arts. She continued her work for almost forty years, first at the Los Angeles County Museum and eventually at the Museum of New Mexico where she served as curator of the Spanish colonial art department for nearly twenty-five years.