La heráldica del poderlos emblemas de la sacarocracia cubana del siglo XIX a través de sus vajillas blasonadas

Résumé

The wealthy Cuban colonial families commissioned earthenware and porcelain tablewares to Chinese and European factories. These tablewares were personalized with coats of arms, helmets, crowns, and monograms. This constitutes one of the most significant manifestations of the use of heraldry by the Cuban aristocracy and bourgeoisie, as a sign of distinction and high social rank, closely related to their economic power. At present, hundreds of pieces of these old table services are preserved, scattered in several museums, mainly in Cuba, as well as in numerous private collections. The research carried out in this doctoral thesis aims to fill the lack of studies on this subject. For this, it has analyzed the emergence and rise of the custom of the use of these emblazoned tablewares, and their decline over time, as well as their subsequent decorative function and as collector's pieces, especially from the first decades of the twentieth century. The manufacture and marketing of these personalized table services have been investigated, scrutinizing the main manufactures, decoration workshops and porcelain merchants of the time that received orders from the elite of Cuban society; and research has been carried out on the history, genealogy, and heraldry of several of the most relevant Cuban families whose pieces of old tablewares are currently preserved. To carry out this study, it has been essential to locate, collect, analyze, and select as many documentary sources as possible, both written, graphic, and oral. This has allowed to carry out the work of investigation, search, and discovery to reach a broader knowledge of the heraldic earthenware and porcelain tablewares that identify ancient Cuban families. Some sources include publications on genealogy and heraldry, both Hispanic and Cuban; writings by Cuban researchers, chroniclers and costumbristas who analyze Cuban history during its colonial period and at the beginning of its subsequent republican stage. Other sources consulted are books, trade catalogues, commercial and industrial yearbooks on the manufacture and marketing of Chinese and European porcelain; and oral sources, which although represented a significant smaller proportion within the consulted sources, are also part of the family cultural heritage and are intimately linked to the history of Cuban tablewares object of this study. The contact with private collectors and public institutions that preserve tablewares with Cuban heraldry allowed to compile a significant set of pieces for study, which constitutes a representative sample of the different types and characteristics of these table services. The fieldwork focused mainly on reviewing the documents from the Pickman-La Cartuja earthenware factory in Seville to collect information on the personalized tablewares ordered from Cuba to this Sevillian factory. These documents are kept in the Provincial Historical Archive of Seville, whose ownership corresponds to the National Museum of Decorative Arts of Madrid, and included albums of shields and initials, earthenware catalogs, price lists, order, debit, invoice, and shipping books among others. A catalog of pieces has been selected representing the current collections of tablewares of old Cuban families. The cataloguing sheets follow the guidelines of the Integrated System of Documentation and Museum Management DOMUS, with all the standardized fields allow to gather the most complete information possible about each piece in question. A cataloguing work of this type is fundamental in the safeguarding and dissemination of the patrimonial value of these types of pieces for future generations. The detailed study of these personalized table services allows to publicize unprecedented aspects such as: the stamps and brands that identify the manufactures, the decoration workshops, and the retailers involved in their elaboration and commercialization, facilitating in some cases a correct dating. The analysis of the heraldic ornament present in these tablewares, goes beyond the mere description of the furniture, colors, metals, ornaments, etc. that make them up, or to what extent they adapt to the correct representation of a lineage, or to the laws of heraldry; they have also been the subject of a broader analysis, addressing a historical-genealogical approach, which has sometimes made it possible to better catalog the pieces, by accurately determining their original owner. Finally, another contribution of this thesis are the results of the research carried out in the old archives of the Pickman-La Cartuja earthenware factory in Seville. This has allowed to expose information on the Pickman Sevillian earthenware tablewares present in the collections consulted; as well as rescuing from these archives unpublished documentation of several personalized table services commissioned to this factory by Cuban families, of which no pieces are currently preserved. The table services with emblematic heraldry, commissioned by the Cuban oligarchy, were for almost two centuries an instrument of power to display before their guests at receptions and banquets. Their artistic dimension, with a great diversity of typologies and decorative styles; their historical and documentary value, witnesses of a stage in the history of Cuba, have conferred these pieces the category of assets of the Cuban cultural heritage. In addition to their status as tangible heritage, as artistic objects of porcelain and earthenware, these ancient heraldic tablewares are also a manifestation of intangible heritage. The history of their collecting involves information transmitted by oral tradition from generation to generation; their coats of arms and monograms encompass chronicles of characters and lineages of past times; and their use denotes customs and social fashions of other times.