mosaic brass box

A hand-wrought brass box with a glass-mosaic lid, this is the workhorse table form of Salvador Teran's studio, the object type he is most associated with. Teran, an early Spratling apprentice and first cousin of the Castillo brothers, left thirteen years of anonymous design work at Los Castillo to build his own workshop, where, as Davis and Pack recorded, he combined metal with mosaic and kept a large shop busy turning out boxes, trays, and other decorative objects (Morrill, p. 206).

The construction is straightforward and characteristic: brass raised and worked by hand, the lid inset with cut tiles whose color animates an otherwise plain metal box. It is the standard form against which his figural and larger pieces stand out.

With more recorded sales than most of his other forms, the mosaic brass box is the most frequently encountered Teran object and a reliable entry point into his work.