THREE LOCKS CHEST. WALNUT, IRON. SPAIN, 17TH CENTURY.

Town hall chest. Walnut wood. XVII century. Rectangular carved walnut wood chest, with a flat lid, and simple decoration on its fronts with smooth moldings of different widths. It is raised slightly from the ground thanks to six legs with a cylindrical socket on a flattened circle. On the outside, it has a series of wrought iron fittings (corner pieces with flordelised finish), two handles on the sides with openwork fittings and, on the front, three locks with keys with openwork lock shields and decorated with simplified plant elements. Inside, it has a wooden partition on one side and located high, which consists of a rectangular space with a hinged lid and two small drawers at the bottom. The three keys, made of iron, have their eyes worked and decorated, with simple decorative elements towards that side of the stem or central part and the usual flat bits. Chests with three locks are also often known as “Town Hall” or “Council” chests, because both these and those with two keys were often used by religious, military or civil organizations to store valuable objects and documents, securing them with a key. to each person responsible (as many people as there are locks and keys), so that they had to get together to open the furniture. In many places in the Spanish territories it was used as a municipal archive, following laws inherited from a pragmatic law of June 9, 1500 with which the Catholic Monarchs forced the Councils of their territories to build town hall houses, prisons and have an ark of privileges. and writings. Despite having been abundant in their time, numerous examples have not reached us because they fell into disuse and were replaced. Compare with that of the Council of Villafranca de la Marisma (Los Palacios and Villafranca, Seville), that of Valdipiélago (León), that of Matapozuelos (Valladolid), that of the Cabildo of Buenos Aires of Argentina (18th century, following previous models), etc

· Size: 157x64x78 cms