Tea Bowl

An Aymara official (curaca or kuraka) would have worn this hat during a festival held in Potosí (in present-day Bolivia), one of the most prominent sites of silver mining in the Spanish Americas. The design features native and European flora and fauna surrounding a central triangular shape that represents the Cerro de Potosí (see illustration), the mountain where silver was mined beginning in the 1540s. The production of this precious metal was dependent on the forced labor of tens of thousands of Indigenous workers and enslaved Africans. As the transatlantic market for silver grew, so too did the Spanish Empire’s reliance on systems of enslavement and racial caste.