Curator, Anna Burckhardt: If you come from Latin America or even the Caribbean or even some parts of the US, you will know the Butaque chair. When we say Butaque, we refer to a type of design that exists in many different variations. And so in this case, Butaque speaks to a low-inclined easy chair with a high back.
Clara Porset was born in Matanzas, Cuba in 1895 to an affluent family. And so she was able to travel to the United States to study design as well as to Europe, where she was able to meet and learn from some of the students and teachers that worked at the Bauhaus. After she returned from her studies to Cuba, she worked as a designer as well as a teacher.
Eventually she sort of got into a bit of trouble because of her political beliefs, and that led her to move to Mexico, where she really established herself by investigating Mexico's craft traditions. The Butaque became her signature piece. It became really prevalent throughout Mexico.
I think this object feels very personal because my mother was a textile designer and she was particularly interested in learning from the Indigenous and campesino communities around Colombia that were really proponents for different ways of using materials and different ways of creating.
So when I look at this piece, I think of Clara and a woman who had the privilege of having a platform and used it for advocating for these skilled practices in Latin America. But I also think about the skilled crafts people that had been producing these really wonderful pieces for years and years before Clara Porset arrived in Mexico. And it really makes me think of their stories and really who they were.