Margot van Voorhies Carr

She became particularly known for handwrought silver jewelry and colored champlevé enamel, including designs derived from Japanese art, Mexican and pre-Columbian imagery, animals, flowers, and geometric forms. De Taxco was one of the comparatively few women to direct a major workshop during the mid-twentieth-century Taxco silver movement. Her work is held in museum collections including the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum.

• Name — Margot de Taxco • Birth Name — Margot van Voorhies Carr • Born — c. 1896 • Birthplace — San Francisco, California, United States • Died — 26 July 1985 • Place of death — Taxco, Guerrero, Mexico • Field — Jewelry design, silverwork, enamel • Citizenship — United States, Mexico (naturalized) • Movement — Taxco School, Mexican modernism

De Taxco was born in San Francisco to a Dutch father and a French-Canadian mother. Published institutional records generally give her birth year as 1896, although accounts of her early life are incomplete. She developed an interest in Asian art before moving to Mexico. During a visit to Taxco in 1937, she met the Mexican silversmith Antonio Castillo, one of the craftsmen associated with William Spratling's Taller de Las Delicias. Van Voorhies Carr and Castillo subsequently married.

While Antonio Castillo continued to work at Las Delicias, De Taxco began drawing jewelry designs that he produced in the evenings. The pieces sold successfully, and in 1939 Castillo left Spratling's workshop and established Los Castillo with his brothers, other relatives, and Van Voorhies Carr. De Taxco served as the principal designer during the workshop's early period. According to Antonio Castillo, her earliest drawings were largely two-dimensional, and his technical experience helped translate them into sculptural silver forms. She worked in a collaborative environment that also included Jorge "Chato" Castillo and Salvador Terán as designers and silversmiths. Many early Los Castillo objects reflected De Taxco's interest in Japanese art, particularly in their treatment of fish, waves, flowers, and other natural forms. Motifs later associated with Margot de Taxco first appeared during this period. The silversmiths Reveriano Castillo and Miguel Meléndez experimented with enamel-on-silver techniques at Los Castillo, which Van Voorhies Carr later developed into an important part of her own workshop's production.

Following the end of her marriage to Antonio Castillo, De Taxco sold the house they had built together and used the proceeds to establish an independent workshop and retail shop. Several craftsmen from Los Castillo joined her. The workshop, known as Margot de Taxco, opened in 1948. Margot de Taxco operated according to the collaborative taller system used by the major Taxco workshops. De Taxco prepared the designs and directed production, while specialized silversmiths cut, formed, assembled, soldered, enameled, and finished the jewelry. She produced detailed colored drawings that served as models for the enamelists and compiled instructions describing the production stages for her enamel designs. Among the craftsmen associated with the workshop were Miguel Meléndez, Sigi Pineda, and Jaime Quiroz. Sigi Pineda became head of the enameling department before opening his own workshop in 1952. The workshop sold directly to visitors in Taxco and maintained wholesale and retail accounts in Mexico and the United States. Its Mexican distribution included Sanborns stores and accounts in Mexico City, Monterrey, Acapulco, Puerto Vallarta, Guadalajara, San Miguel de Allende, and Mazatlán. American outlets included stores in San Francisco, New York, Chicago, Tucson, and Washington, D.C. A fire in 1960 destroyed or damaged the workshop and forced the business to move from central Taxco to a location on the highway toward Mexico City. It moved again to a smaller shop in 1973. Labor disputes and financial difficulties affected the company during the 1970s. A strike in 1974 closed the shop for several months, and the formal Margot de Taxco operation closed in 1978.

De Taxco continued to live in Taxco after the closure of her workshop. Original molds, patterns, and design drawings were dispersed, and some of her designs continued to be produced by other Taxco silversmiths. After a fall in April 1985, she was hospitalized. She died in Taxco on 26 July 1985.