Blue Mayan Mosaic Brass Box

This Salvador Terán table box shows the workshop formula at its most direct: warm brass, a compact hinged form, and a dense field of smalto glass mosaic that turns a domestic container into a small modernist panel. The blue ground and brass Mayan figure make the box read frontally, almost like a miniature architectural facade.

The box is marked Mexico to the underside and belongs to the brass and mosaic line associated with Teran after his years around the Castillo workshop. The auction record describes a mid-century modern table box with Mayan figures on a blue ground, measuring 4.5 inches high by 3.25 inches wide by 2.5 inches deep.

As a museum object, it is useful because it isolates the vocabulary that made Teran recognizable: hand-wrought metal, cut glass color, and pre-Columbian-inflected geometry scaled to an everyday object.