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Condition: Used
Country of Origin: Mexico
Manufacturer: Antique unmarked
Mexican Botas
In the book, Commerce of the Prairies, Josiah Gregg says 'Then there are the botas which somewhat resemble the leggins worn by the bandits of Italy, and are made of embossed leather, embroidered with fancy silk and tinsel thread and bound around the knee with curiously tasselled garters.'
I have a pair, and a single one of another pair, of what I have been told are Mexican botas, the type of article that was tied around the leg, as described by Josiah Gregg in the early 1800s. They are of soft leather, very intricately tooled.
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These pieces, two matching, about 24 inches across the bottom and 37 inches from bottom to rounded top, and one smaller piece, 23-1/2 inches across the bottom, and 23 inches tall, are of soft leather, finely tooled.
The two larger ones have a second piece of leather behind the tooling, up about 19 inches. The small one has strips of leather along the side edges. There is edge stitching around the scallops which has worn off on much of it. They have been worn and patched. The small one has two neat holes 9 inches apart near the top, probably to fasten it to something. The tooling is very intricate, and unusual in such soft leather.
They were collected in Mexico by my husband's mother. My mother-in-law was a German who lived in Mexico City from about 1917 to 1977 and were very old when she bought them. She used them as table covers. My husband says he remembers hearing that she found them at a Thieves Market. She may have done some of the mending and patching, I don't know.
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