Laguna No. 1 / La Laguna / San Cristóbal de La Laguna

Noted and illustrated in Rodríguez Moure's Historia de la parroquia ma-triz de Nuestra Señora de la Concepción de La Laguna (1915). Noted and illustrated in Gestoso y Pérez (1919). Described in Borras Guals (1995): a beautiful ceramic (glazed earthenware) Mudéjar font of the 15th century. The basin has reliefs depicting foliage motifs and bunches of grapes. The upper base has braid/lace motif and its lightly concave towards the centre. Described and illustrated in Mehling (1985) as "a 15C Majolica font". Hernández Perera (1952), after Gestoso y Pérez (1903), notes a group of similar fonts of Sevillian manufacture and sent to the Canary Islands which includes Breña Alta, Los Sauces, Gáldar (Arucas), La Laguna and Valsequillo [antes en Telde]. Gestoso dates the La Laguna font to ca. 1479. The Cabildo de Tenerife informs that the ceramic fonts were originally made in Seville and believed to have been brought to Tenerife for the baptism of the native Guanches [source: www.puntoinfo.idecnet.com]. Hernández Perera (1952) points out that the basin of this baptismal font has decorative motifs similar to those on the font at the Ermita de la Virgen de Gracia in Archidona (Malaga province): discs, stars and acorns. Studied and illustrated in Lorenzo Santana Rodríguez' La pila bautismal recreada por Moure, in La Laguna y su parroquia matriz. Estudios sobre la Iglesia de la Concepción (2016: 358-375) [https://www.academia.edu/38546299/La_pila_bautismal_recreada_por_Moure] [accessed 3 April 2022]; Santana Rodríguez (ibid.) mentions an eagle amid the busy vegetal decoration, also including fleurs-de-lis and lion heads, both of which, argues the author, are the emblem of the Perdomo family, likely donors of the font to the church, according to this author; the same author rejects the 1497 dating and proposes instead 1556 on documentary evidence;