Enfilade

Emerging from a symposium held at the Denver Art Museum in November 2024, this publication is also available free of charge online with a PDF available for download.

Jorge Rivas Pérez, Karina Corrigan, and Kathryn Santner, Transpacific Crossings: Art, Trade, and the Manila Galleon (Denver: Mayer Center for Ancient and Latin American Art at the Denver Art Museum, 2026), 198 pages, ISBN: 978-1945483202, $30.

For 250 years (1565–1815), the Manila Galleon transported Asian goods from the Philippines to the Americas under the rule of the Spanish Crown. Stopping in Acapulco, Mexico, the silk, fans, lacquered goods, clothes, and porcelain brought by the galleon rapidly circulated through the Americas, introducing a new visual culture that influenced objects, consumers, makers, and merchants alike. Conversely, products imported from the Americas, such as silver, indigo dye, cochineal red, chili peppers, and corn, had an enormous impact on Asia. Eleven scholars from the United States, Mexico, and Singapore present current research on how the vast exchange of materials, techniques, and ideas between continents impacted the trajectory of art and material culture across the Pacific.

c o n t e n t s

Director’s Foreword — Christoph Heinrich

Introduction — Kathryn Santner, Karina H. Corrigan, and Jorge F. Rivas Pérez

The Manila Galleon: An Historical Primer — Diego Javier Luis

Inventories of Luxury and Wealth: Asian Trade and Material Culture in Spanish America — Jorge F. Rivas Pérez

‘Brocades of Gold and Silver upon Silk’: A Microhistory of a Set of Chinese Church Vestments for the Spanish Market — Karina H. Corrigan

Cut from the World: Philippine Piña Fabric in the East India Marine Society Collection — Abi Lua

An Ocean of Blue and White: Archaeological Excavations at the Port of Acapulco — Roberto Junco

Name that Pot! Viceregal Potters and Workshops of Puebla de los Ángeles — Margaret E. Connors McQuade

For the Consolation of Manila: A Case Study of a New Spanish Image of Christ — Ronda Kasl

The Other Silver Flow: Liturgical Objects in the Philippines — Kathryn Santner

A Cabinet of Many Cultures — Clement Onn

‘Graceful, Rich, and Pleasing to the Eye’: Seamless Facture across the Pacific — Samuel Frédéric Luterbacher

Biombos in Modern Mexican Interiors — Aldo Solano Rojas

Contributors