For New Yorkers seeking a dose of escapism, a trip to the Hispanic Society Museum and Library in Washington Heights to see “A Room of Her Own: The Estrado and the Hispanic World” may be just the thing. This transporting exhibition takes as its topic the estrado, a private drawing room for women once found in the homes of the elite in Spain and the Spanish Americas. A space of both opulence and confinement, today the estrado is bound up in complex notions of gender, cultural exchange, colonialism, and power.
An important aspect of domestic life for hundreds of years until the 19th century, the estrado was often where a family’s most prized possessions were displayed, and where women could socialize, educate their children, and attend to hobbies like lacemaking and needlework. Still, it remains an overlooked and under-researched subject.
“This is the first exhibition of its kind on this topic, which to me was so shocking,” says Alexandra Frantischek Rodriguez-Jack, the show’s curator. She spent years looking at period documents including dowries, letters, postmortem inventories, travel documents, and literature to find mentions of the estrado and its accouterments.
With those historical references in mind, Rodriguez-Jack selected more than 60 exquisite items from the Hispanic Society’s vast permanent collection, many of them on display for the first time. The show is situated in the museum’s enchanting terra-cotta arcade, which gives the displayed objects—red velvet pillows, walnut chests with ivory inlays, silver maté cups, and crucifixes dripping with precious stones, for example—a hint of the grandeur an estrado itself might have had. (The museum, founded in 1904 by art collector and railroad scion Archer Milton Huntington, reopened last year after a six-year, $20 million renovation.) “Everything’s here for a reason, and it’s because the description resembles very closely something that would have been in the estrado based on these inventories,” Rodriguez-Jack says.
The roots of the estrado, though a bit murky, likely trace to the late Middle Ages in Al-Andalus, the Muslim-ruled region of the Iberian Peninsula. There are many signs of Moorish influence on the estrado, starting with its incorporation of a wood or cork platform called a tarima that would sit six inches off the floor. The tarima would have been covered with lush rugs, pillows, and cushions for lounging. Sturdier furniture arrived later, and was often smaller in scale compared to the furniture for men. (Estrado furniture was called muebles ratones, or “mouse furniture.”)
Early accounts of the estrado in Southern Spain indicate these were not exclusively places for women, but by the 15th century, the estrado had evolved into a gendered space among the upper classes. In the 16th century the tradition spread to Spanish viceroyalties in the Americas, “where the estrado really takes off because you have such an incredible cultural contact between Asia, Indigenous techniques and cultures and materials, and also with Europe,” Rodriguez-Jack says—a result of Spain’s vast empire and ability to import goods from around the world. In her research, Rodriguez-Jack found that the estrado was not reserved just for white European women; Inca elites were early adopters of the tradition as well.
A major status symbol of the estrado was a drop-front writing desk, where letters, jewelry, and other personal items could be stored. “It was the optimal luxury furniture,” Rodriguez-Jack says. These desks were usually made locally, perhaps by Indigenous or mestizo artisans incorporating their own techniques, and featured intricate marquetry in patterns that resembled Islamic, Chinese, or Flemish designs—an example of the estrado’s varied cultural inspirations. One such desk on display at the Hispanic Society was made in Oaxaca circa 1650–1700; its contrasting pattern comes from a black paste called zulaque, made from vegetable dye.
It’s noteworthy that the finest treasures in a wealthy family’s home would live in the woman’s quarters. “When I was researching these household inventories, some of the most expensive and incredible imported objects would have been found in the estrado. It would say, ‘Estrado rug, imported from Turkey,’ or ‘24 estrado pillows, imported from China.’ So it’s clearly a very, very important space,” says Rodriguez-Jack.
Tempting as it is to apply a 21st-century feminist lens to the estrado—women, away from the men, empowered to do as they wished in their own beautiful spaces—Spanish noblewomen still lived in a man’s world. “We’re talking about a period where women aren’t necessarily wandering the streets unaccompanied. If you have money, you are inside, you do not leave your house,” says Rodriguez-Jack. “We have documentation that describes women as sewing, they would put their sewing away, then their servants would come in and serve them food, and then they would just be hanging out there pretty much all day.”
But there is some indication of subversion and female agency within the estrado, too. Take the búcaro, a water vessel made of fragrant red earthenware that was popular among women in Mexico and subsequently spread to Europe. (In Velazquez’s 1656 masterpiece Las Meninas, an attendant hands a búcaro, like the one on display at the Hispanic Society, to Infanta Margaret Theresa, the daughter of King Philip IV of Spain.) Women would sometimes ingest small bits of búcaros, a trend that led to fashionably pale skin, and could even be used as an early form of contraception.
The objects in “A Room of Her Own” represent some of the finest cross-cultural craftsmanship of the era, but there is a dark side to such splendor. Colonial extravagance always comes at a cost—especially to the populations it exploits. Silver, for example, was common in estrados, especially in Viceregal Peru, where silver mines led to an explosion of wealth for the Spanish ruling class. But silver was often extracted using forced labor from Indigenous workers, and conditions could be horrific. There is an unsettled feeling to some of the objects here; they carry with them the destructive history of imperialism in the New World.
In Europe the estrado began to fall out of fashion around the late 18th century, when trends leaned toward French and English styles. It remained popular in the Americas until the 19th century, when middle-class families installed their own versions with slightly less fanciful wares.
That the estrado fell so quickly from cultural memory after that is a mystery to scholars like Rodriguez-Jack. Even when it does show up in historical surveys, it’s often a footnote—a brush-off that is unsurprising for a feminine space. “I think it’s the fact that it’s woman-coded and it’s decorative arts, so it’s almost doubly marginalized,” she says. While several paintings are included in the show (and the museum’s star piece, Francisco Goya’s magnificent 1797 portrait of the Duchess of Alba, hangs nearby), the main focus is decorative objects, which have historically gotten short shrift compared to “fine art.”
With all its complexities and contradictions, the estrado makes for a fascinating exhibition subject—and it deserves even more research. “It’s exciting to just scratch the surface,” says Rodriguez-Jack. “I’m hoping this is just the beginning.”
“A Room of Her Own: The Estrado and the Hispanic World” is on view at the Hispanic Society Museum and Library through March 9, 2025.