The round top of this table is unusual within the universe of Spanish Colonial furniture designs promoted and produced by New Mexico’s New Deal and associated art programs. The state’s Federal Art Project worked in concert with its vocational schools to set up workshops to create the decorative arts needed to furnish numerous newly constructed buildings. The workshops employed artists to manufacture chairs, tables, light fixtures, etc. according to suggested patterns, but this unique table may have been custom-designed and fabricated for the 1938 McKinley County Courthouse by artist Elidio Gonzales. (And perhaps these four chairs were made to match.)
