La Zacatecana Casa-Museo

SALA 1. The main room of the Museum is decorated in a Louis XVI style, these furnishings were common in our country during the 19th century in the Porfirio era. At the back, there are 2 French porcelain vases, Empire style from the 18th century. <br>From the ceiling hangs a cut glass and bronze chandelier that adorns it thanks to its design. It also features two paintings from the 17th and 18th centuries titled “The Patronage of San José” and “The Piety” respectively, works that highlight the decoration as objects belonging to the Museum's antiquities collection.<br> There are also bronze, ivory, and terracotta sculptures, Bristol glass pieces, French porcelain, majolica, among others, and a beautiful French mirror finished in gold leaf.<br><br>SALA 2. This room holds a treasure in pieces of invaluable artistic, cultural, and historical value, collected over the years, including an Italian Renaissance-style dining room that influenced Italy, France, and Spain, hand-carved from walnut wood. <br>Inside the showcase of this piece, stands out for its beauty a crystal liquor bottle made by Don Ventura Sit, glassmaker founder of the Royal Factory of San Ildefonso de la Granja located near Alcalá de Henares, Spain. <br>It also features two soup tureens from the Company of the Indies, some Vienna porcelain planters, and a pair of Chinese porcelain lions, belonging to the Fog Dynasty; all these pieces are from the 17th century and possibly the oldest in the Museum. Additionally, on one of the shelves is a beautiful English dinnerware set from the 19th century and a tea set in 19th century French Limoges porcelain. The room is adorned with both European and American glass pieces like Milk, Bristol, Baccarat; as well as Ruby Glass.<br> A 19th-century clock topped with a bronze sun pendulum stands out in the corner of the room, part of the collection of 43 clocks located on the upper floor. Lastly, two columns are noteworthy, one made of Carrara marble with a Rococo style vase and the other of alabaster.<br><br>SALA 3. In this room on the ground floor, an ante-room in the George Unna style from 1890 is displayed, with a built-in showcase on the left wall containing cut glass, Baccarat, Ruby Glass, Overlane, Vaseline, among others. <br>In this room, porcelain pieces such as plates or bowls from England can be appreciated, highly valued by well-known specialists painted with the technique “flow ink” from the 19th century. There are also, on both sides of the display case, a pair of oil paintings on silk with the theme of still life, from the same century.<br><br>SALA 4. This elegant Victorian-style room called the “Music Room” features a 19th-century organ with a bellows. Beautifully embossed silver mirrors can be seen adorning the walls from the same century. Perhaps one of the oldest paintings in the collection is located here, a small oil on copper sheet, anonymous with the theme “king with archangel” from 1660.<br>One of the walls features an extraordinary piece, an iconographic parchment manufactured in 1899, depicting the entire history of humanity before and after Jesus Christ. On lovely corner tables rest bronze sculptures of a pair of Arabs in high relief.<br><br>SALA 5. This room is the first belonging to the upper floor, once occupied by families who lived in this large house. Here we find a classic Porfirio bedroom with a three-moon wardrobe made of American oak dating from 1920.<br> Also highlighting are Chinese objects such as a 17th-century porcelain vase, a small folding screen with period design made of sandalwood and pearl shell inlays from the 18th century. On the right wall, there is an oil on canvas from the 19th century representing San Francisco Solano. The first piece acquired by the collector José Antonio Origel is also found here, a Bristol glass vase in beige and coffee tones that adorns the lower part of an art-nouveau style table.<br><br>SALA 6. This room exhibits a collection of 53 crucifixes from different periods and styles from the 17th to the 20th century, made with various materials such as bronze, clay, paste, and ivory, among others. One of the important pieces in this room is a crucifix made from corn cane (Purépecha) dating back to the 18th century.<br> In this same area, we locate the Museum's most important painting, an oil on canvas from the year 1746 representing “Christ venerated in the Church of the Convent of Santa Teresa” created by the great painter Novo Hispano Miguel Cabrera, who began his artistic work almost at the same time as the Baroque style began to decline, born in the city of Antequera in Oaxaca in 1695, he is believed to have trained in the workshop of José de Ibarra, where he began his artistic activity in 1740.<br><br>SALA 7. Here we find an elegant Empire-style bedroom carved from walnut wood from the 19th century, with two wardrobes with mirrors. Adorning the bureaus are lamps made of alpaca and glass crystals. On the left wall of the bed, we can see a pencil drawing of an elderly man, from the recent past of the 20th century.<br> On the elegant dressing table, there is a bust of a woman, in bronze “art-nouveau.” This style developed in the late 1880s, with the following decade being its peak of creativity. The production of Art-Nouveau ceramics was not limited to vases and bowls but also extended to sculpture. On the upper left side of the room, we can appreciate two embroidered paintings from the 19th century. If we look to the right of the doorway, we can see a Renaissance-style hand-carved wardrobe with anthropomorphic figures resting on it, along with various Bristol and Milk glass pieces, among others.<br><br>SALA 8. Known as the “Clock Room,” it is an important collection of 43 pieces, with 39 located in this room and the remaining 4 dispersed in other rooms, covering various styles, periods, and materials with which they were made.<br> The oldest is a clock from the mid-17th century built in Germany, most of the pieces are made of wood. We also find various materials such as: leaded and gilded bronze; porcelain, glass, wood with inlays of pearl shell, calamine, various colored marbles like gray, green, pink; one even octagonal with lunar phases and a calendar. There are wall clocks, table clocks, and the admired “Grandfather” clocks. Moreover, the walls are adorned with a pair of directly carved, gilded, and polychromed sculptures of a Franciscan and a Dominican from the 18th century.<br> On one of the walls, you can admire an oil on canvas of San Francisco, anonymous (restored) from the 17th century and console tables made of carved wood decorated with Florentine gold leaf, with marble bases dating from the 19th century.<br><br>SALA 9. This cozy lounge is decorated with 19th century furniture in the style of Ferdinand I (Emperor of Austria from 1835 to 1848), featuring a three-seat sofa and two armchairs, along with 4 upholstered chairs in an exquisite brocade in beige and coffee tones. Additionally, this type of furniture was widely used during the empire of Maximilian (1864-1867 in our country), with the chairs finished with the coat of arms of Ferdinand I.<br> A notable piece is a secretaire made of elm wood veneer from the 19th century, on top are books from the same century covering various topics.<br> The paintings hanging on the walls of this room such as: “Virgin with Child” and “Nazarene,” are oils painted on glass also from the 19th century. Here we find two very old works from 1670, signed by the artist J. Refugio del Castillo. Due to the passage of time, it was necessary to restore and re-canvass them. Another important piece is the painting “The Circumcision,” oil on canvas from the 18th century from the European school. We finish this description with the French chandelier with eight lights from the 19th century that hangs from the ceiling dispersing light through its cut glass and baccarat prisms.<br><br>SALA 10. “The blue room,” as visitors call it, for its beauty is one of the favorites among tourists, featuring a beautiful Austrian room upholstered in marine velvet and matching cushions. As we survey this salon, we find two black lacquered dressers with inlays of pearl shell in their Chinese motifs, made in 1850. One of the walls is adorned with a silk cover embroidered with Chinese motifs in red and navy from the 18th century, undoubtedly a piece of significant artistic and cultural value.<br> One of the most beautiful pieces in the museum is an English Wedgwood porcelain medallion from the 19th century; contrasting above a dresser, an oriental bust in wood from the 17th century, in which part of its decoration is still noticeable.<br><br>SALA 11. Lastly, and no less important, in this room is an Ottoman-style room, a curious detail is that it has two double armchairs called “you and me,” upholstered in shedron velvet. Most of the pieces that decorate it are Venetian such as the oil on canvas depicting a royal funeral, the mirrors, and mosaics with virgins: one embossed in leather and another of Italian mosaics that are so precious and well-known. “The Piety,” is a sculpture in Italian porcelain from the 19th century, and it is a unique piece.<br> On the corners, there are circular tables with vases in art-nouveau style clay from the late 19th century. The left wall is also decorated with miniature portraits of Italian women in an esgrafiado ivory frame with gilded filigree from the 18th century.