Wood, with fall front and 6 drawers. Barniz de Pasto decoration. Granja workshop, 2023

Portable writing box (Bargueño) with barniz de Pasto decoration, with fall front, four small internal drawers and two larger drawers below the fall front. Decorated on the outside with a dense scheme of stylised flowers on a brown-gold ground, with borders of stylised guilloche on a white ground and wavy edge in blue/green, with Greek Key motif worked in low relief using thicker mopa mopa. The underside of the hinged, sloping lid depicts and a landscape with village and three volcanos in the background.

Given by GRANJA - Barniz de Pasto

Given by the Taller Granja (Granja Workshop), led by Gilberto Granja and Oscar O. Peña Granja; registered file 2023/276

This small writing box with six drawers is a reduced size version of a traditional 17th-century form. The landscape with volcanos (one active) refers to the local topography, and the Galeras (Urcunina) volcano in particular, which Master Gilberto includes in much of his work. The foreground scene represents a rural hamlet as Gilberto remembers from his childhood, with items from the type of local pottery where he then worked. Floral decoration is a common feature of colonial period barniz, whereas the Greek Key worked in low relief using thicker mopa mopa, and guilloche motif, are more characteristic of the period after independence in 1830. The barniz decoration took approximately 200-240 hours over 25-30 days.

Gilberto Granja, who has been working for nearly sixty years and leads the Granja workshop, is one of the leading barniz masters. In 2009 and 2021 he received medals for artisan mastery in the "Traditional" and "Master of Masters" categories, respectively. In 2023 he was filmed demonstrating the techniques at the V&A Lacquer in the Americas conference. Oscar O. Peña Granja is the son of maestro Gilberto. His work ‘develops this family legacy exploring alternative routes in design, aesthetic, formal and technical applications’, developing collaborative work with university students, artisans, artists and designers. Their barniz product range includes cabinet-making, lathe turning, carved figures and jewellery.

The Granja workshop is one of a few that publish the names of the resin collectors, the woodworkers, the lathe operators and varnishers who were involved in the creation of each piece (note: María Cecilia Álvarez-White, El Barniz de Pasto: Secretos Y Revelaciones [Bogotá, D.C., Colombia: Universidad de los Andes, Facultad de Artes y Humanidades, 2023], p.300). Gilberto and Oscar describe how they seek ways to transmit the knowledge of barniz de Pasto so that new generations can become involved in the craft.
“We feel part of the material, the fire, the colors, the textures and the game. Each hand that is part of our history is a hand that supports us and is also a hand that we evoke daily, that of women and men who have taken the Mopa Mopa plant and care for its mystery. Those hands are strength, because like us, they enliven the tender, generous, versatile and powerful spirit of the plant. Our job has been to let the Mopa Mopa speak to us and with its voice we plot colors and shapes on the wood. We are instruments of that voice and its legacy.

Further information
Víctor Chaves R., 'Maestro Gilberto Granja y las manos del artesano' in Arte y artesanías (https://pagina10.com/web/category/pagina10/culturas-2/arte-y-artesanias- culturas-2/)
7 septiembre, 2014 (https: /pagina10.com/web/maestro-gilberto-granja-y-las-manos-del- artesano/)
por Página 10 (https://pagina10.com/web/author/mcepeda/)

MinCultura - Los Hijos de Hefesto, 'La Familia del Barniz', pp.42-7 [online journal published by the Colombian ministry of Culture, 2017]

Madeline Sobral (Cherokee Nation), 'BARNIZ DE PASTO The Magic of Colombia's Mopa Mopa' in First American Art Magazine, NO. 39, SUMMER 2023

Barniz de Pasto (‘varnish from Pasto’, the city of San Juan de Pasto in southwest Colombia) is a unique surface decoration using a plant resin (mopa mopa) unique to the region. The resin was used by Indigenous peoples before the invasive arrival of the Spanish, but from the 16th century new techniques were developed so as to apply it in the form of coloured film to gourd vessels and European woodwork products. The resulting bright ‘lacquer’ has been worked with extraordinary delicacy and creativity, and continues to be produced, uniquely, in San Juan de Pasto, using resin harvested by a few Indigenous families, in dangerous conditions and at high altitude. In 2020 the technique was included in the UNESCO List of Intangible Cultural Heritage in Need of Urgent Safeguarding (Colombia).

Since 2015 the V&A has been a prime mover and collaborator in object-based research into barniz de Pasto, notably through its Lacquer in the Americas conference (April 2023) which brought together the widest ever range of expertise on the subject, and produced an open access, online special issue devoted to the subject in the MDPI Journal Heritage (2023, 6): https://www.mdpi.com/journal/heritage

W.1-2025