BOLIVIA INTEREST, Photographer Unknown, c.1930

Album de fotografias de las residencias de su Excelencia señor Don Simon I. Patiño en Cochabamba y Portales, c.1930s. Sepia-toned silver gelatin prints (42), each measuring 198 x 266mm (or the reverse), depicting the palatial interiors of Bolivian tin magnate Simon I. Patiño's Cochabamba Portales home, each print individually mounted and captioned. Housed in a large oblong folio measuring 434 x 540mm in contemporary red crushed morocco gilt by Editions Historiques, upper cover bearing the gilt-stamped arms of Bolivia and decorative gilt borders, spine gilt in six compartments with raised bands, edges gilt, silk endpapers and patterned flyleaves.

Patiño's tin mining fortune allowed him to furnish his grand home with the finest imported materials available in the early 20th-century, including Carrara marble, French wood, Italian tapestries and delicate silks. He commissioned a French architect to design this mansion, and the interior boasted a wide range of stylistic influences illustrated in this album, from classical antiquity through to Art Deco, including rooms themed as Etruscan, Greek, Pompeii, Chinese, Japanese, Persian, Louis XV, Louis XVI, Robert Adam, Imperial, and 'modern'. Patiño, whose was living in France with deteriorating health by the time the palace was completed in 1925, never actually lived in this grand residence; today it functions as a museum and cultural centre.