Taxco school of silver design

Mexican master craftsmen trained a generation of silversmiths and designers there, many of whom subsequently established independent workshops, including Los Castillo, Taller Borda, the workshop of Antonio Pineda, and Margot de Taxco. Together with other designers and master silversmiths, they formed the group that Betsy D. Quick and Kim Richter call the Taxco School. The Taxco School was the principal center of the broader twentieth-century Mexican silver renaissance. Its designers became known for substantial handwrought construction, technical innovation, sculptural jewelry, and the integration of silver with materials including obsidian, jadeite, amethyst, turquoise, wood, shell, enamel, brass, copper, and gold.

Although modern Taxco silver is frequently associated with Spratling's arrival, silver- and goldsmithing existed in Taxco and the surrounding region long before the twentieth century. During the colonial period, workshops produced religious objects, jewelry, and ornaments used in charrería, including horse trappings and decorated clothing. Gold filigree and multicolored gold jewelry were also produced in Guerrero, while craftsmen in nearby Iguala supplied jewelry to local residents and foreign visitors. The Iguala goldsmith Guadalupe Castellanos was making jewelry before Spratling first visited Taxco in 1926. After the growth of the tourist market, Castellanos incorporated imagery derived from pre-Columbian art and sometimes used ancient jadeite beads. Stromberg credits Spratling with organizing existing skills into a systematic workshop, expanding apprenticeship, identifying production through hallmarks, and developing markets at home and abroad.

The Taxco School developed within the cultural nationalism that followed the Mexican Revolution. Artists, writers, archaeologists, anthropologists, and government officials sought to define a modern Mexican identity through renewed attention to Indigenous history, pre-Columbian art, rural communities, and popular arts. Exhibitions such as Las artes populares en México in 1921 and the Mexican art exhibition organized by René d'Harnoncourt at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1930 presented Indigenous, colonial, popular, and modern Mexican art as parts of a shared national culture. Taxco also became increasingly accessible to visitors after the completion of the highway linking Mexico City, Taxco, and Acapulco in the early 1930s. Artists, writers, filmmakers, political figures, and tourists traveled to the town, bringing new artistic ideas and forming a market for locally produced decorative arts.

Spratling opened Taller de Las Delicias in 1931. He recruited the Iguala master goldsmiths Alfonso Mondragón and Artemio Navarrete to supervise production and train apprentices. The workshop was the first in Taxco to train increasing numbers of silversmiths systematically, creating a hierarchy through which apprentices could become specialized craftsmen and eventually master silversmiths. Among the young craftsmen and future workshop proprietors associated with Las Delicias were Antonio Pineda, Héctor Aguilar, Antonio Castillo, Jorge "Chato" Castillo, Reveriano Castillo, Miguel Castillo, and Salvador Terán. Spratling encouraged experimentation through competitions within the workshop. Spratling also promoted the use of workshop hallmarks. These identified the workshop, communicated silver quality, and helped distinguish Taxco production from work made in other Mexican silver centers. Hallmarks later became important evidence for dating and attributing Taxco silver.

Beginning in the late 1930s, former Las Delicias workers and other designers established independent workshops. Los Castillo was founded in 1939 by Antonio Castillo, his brothers Jorge, Miguel and Justo, his wife Margot van Voorhies Carr, and his cousin Salvador Terán. Antonio Pineda established his workshop in the same year, and Héctor Aguilar founded Taller Borda. These workshops shared aspects of the Las Delicias production system but developed distinct styles. Los Castillo became known for mixed metals, mosaics, inlay, and painterly approaches to metal surfaces. Taller Borda produced jewelry, hollowware, flatware, and decorative objects on a large scale. Pineda increasingly pursued geometric abstraction, sophisticated engineering, and innovative gemstone settings. Margot de Taxco became particularly associated with silver and colored champlevé enamel. Other figures associated with the Taxco School included Valentín Vidaurreta, Matilde Poulat, Enrique Ledesma, Sigi Pineda, Virgilio López, Ana Núñez de Brilanti, Janna Thomas, Hubert Harmon, Elías Alvarado, José María "Chema" Pineda, and numerous master silversmiths whose work supported the better-known workshops.

• Illustration — Silver jar by the Taxco silversmith Ezequiel Tapia Bahena, exhibited at the Museo Nacional de Culturas Populares in Mexico City, 2015 Pre-Columbian sculpture, codices, ceramic stamps, architectural forms, and calendrical imagery supplied motifs including serpents, jaguars, birds, masks, feathers, volutes, and geometric frets. Colonial religious silver, Baroque architecture, Mexican flora and fauna, textiles, ceramics, and other popular arts also informed the movement. LACMA's collection records document Spratling's direct adaptation of specific Mesoamerican sources. His Quetzalcoatl brooch, for example, was based on a Mexica stone vessel depicting facing feathered-serpent heads, while incised lines in the silver evoke the vessel's carved surface. Taxco designers frequently used silver of greater purity than conventional sterling. Pieces may be marked 940, 950, 970, 980, or 990, although standards varied between workshops and periods. Silver was combined with obsidian, amethyst, jadeite, turquoise, onyx, malachite, azurite, rosewood, ebony, tortoiseshell, shell, enamel, brass, copper, and gold. The contrasting materials contributed color, texture, and references to Mexican natural and archaeological resources. LACMA describes Spratling's use of azurite and malachite as representative of his interest in alternating contrasting materials and colors. Antonio Pineda became known for large but wearable constructed forms, ingenious clasps and hinges, and gemstone settings that minimized the amount of visible metal surrounding a stone. Héctor Aguilar used substantial silver, deeply defined lines, and imagery informed by Aztec and Mixtec art. Margot de Taxco developed complex enamel compositions based on Japanese, Mexican, floral, animal, and geometric designs.

The large Taxco taller differed from both factory production and the traditional model in which one artisan completed an entire object. Production was labor-intensive and predominantly manual, but divided among specialized workers. A workshop might include: • the patrón, or proprietor, who directed the business and frequently designed and marketed its work; • designers, who produced drawings or models; • a jefe de taller, who supervised workshop operations and quality; • maestros, or master silversmiths; • specialists in cutting, repoussé, chasing, engraving, hammering, soldering, stone setting, enameling, and finishing; and • apprentices, often known as zorritas during the earliest stage of training. A design could pass through several craftsmen before completion. Consequently, a hallmark commonly identifies the workshop or principal designer rather than every person who contributed to the finished object. The contributions of master silversmiths were sometimes documented through additional marks, but were frequently omitted from commercial and historical accounts.

The growth of tourism and American demand supported the rapid expansion of the Taxco workshops. By 1950, approximately 150 silver shops operated in Taxco, and the town had acquired an international reputation for handwrought jewelry and decorative metalwork. The Second World War accelerated this growth. American buyers who could no longer obtain European luxury goods turned to Mexico. Large Taxco workshops employed between approximately 50 and 422 workers at their height. Taller Borda and Los Castillo each employed more than 300 artisans during the war years, while Spratling y Artesanos reached 422 employees. Taller Borda and Los Castillo produced identification bracelets and chains for American military personnel, while American retailers placed substantial commercial orders. Taxco silver was distributed through stores including Gump's, Saks Fifth Avenue, Neiman Marcus, Tiffany & Co., Filene's, and other retailers in the United States and Mexico. Taxco work also appeared in international exhibitions. Pineda exhibited in San Francisco, Paris, London, Stockholm, Milan, Rome, Moscow, Amsterdam, Vienna, Toronto, Chicago, and New York. His 1944 exhibition at the California Palace of the Legion of Honor led Richard Gump to purchase the group he had presented and establish a lasting commercial relationship.

The annual Taxco Silver Fair originated in a design competition Spratling established for workers at Las Delicias during the mid-1930s. The competition encouraged craftsmen to experiment and demonstrate technical and design ability. In 1937, the government of Guerrero designated 27 June as Silver Day, commemorating the anniversary of the opening of Las Delicias. The event expanded into Silver Week and later became a national competition. In 1953, with Antonio Pineda serving as president of the organizing committee, the sixteenth annual fair became a national event at which the president of Mexico presented the principal award. Pineda won the first national prize and later helped expand the fair to include exhibitions, concerts, ballet, and contemporary dance. The first International Silver Fair was held in 1973. Published accounts differ on the exact scale of international participation, but Morrill and Berk report that silversmiths from 38 countries submitted more than 4,500 objects.

The large-workshop system began to decline during the mid-1950s. The opening of a direct highway from Mexico City to Acapulco in 1955 diverted tourist traffic away from Taxco. Earlier export taxes had also reduced orders from American wholesalers and retailers. Additional labor and operating costs followed the implementation of the Mexican social-security system in Taxco. Workshops were required to document minimum-wage payments and make retroactive social-security contributions. Combined with decreased tourism and changing markets, these obligations placed substantial pressure on the large talleres. Some workshops reduced their staffs, subcontracted production to craftsmen working from home, or closed. Taller Borda went bankrupt in 1966. Los Castillo reduced its operation and later continued on a smaller scale before closing in 1995. Pineda retained a reduced workshop and worked with smiths operating from home. The decline of the large talleres encouraged the growth of the taller familiar, or family workshop, often located in a silversmith's home. Although this distributed production more widely, individual workshops generally lacked the full range of specialized workers, equipment, and quality-control systems available in the largest mid-century operations.

• William Spratling and Taller de Las Delicias • Antonio Pineda • Héctor Aguilar and Taller Borda • Los Castillo • Margot de Taxco • Fred Davis • Ana Núñez de Brilanti (Victoria Taxco) • Valentín Vidaurreta • Matilde Poulat • Enrique Ledesma • Salvador Terán • Sigi Pineda • Virgilio López • Janna Thomas • Hubert Harmon • Elías Alvarado • José María "Chema" Pineda

The Taxco workshop model influenced craft-development initiatives outside Mexico. Between 1945 and 1949, the United States Indian Arts and Crafts Board commissioned Spratling to develop designs and production models intended for manufacture by Alaska Native artisans. The project drew explicitly on his experience organizing Mexican silver jewelry and decorative-arts production. The project was not successfully implemented, but Spratling's models entered the Indian Arts and Crafts Board collection and were later transferred to the National Museum of the American Indian. The Smithsonian American Art Museum has also supported scholarship examining Spratling's Taxco workshop in relation to Mesoamerican art, mineral resources, American modernism, and United States development policy.

• Illustration — Silver shop with a cave motif on Benito Juárez Street in Taxco, 2009 The Taxco School established the town as an internationally recognized center of modern silver design. Stromberg characterizes the school as a system rather than a style, linking design, apprenticeship, specialized hand production, retailing and international distribution. The movement also produced several generations of independent designers and silversmiths. Artists trained in the large workshops established their own businesses, while their children and relatives continued or reinterpreted workshop traditions. Later Taxco designers have worked in jewelry, sculpture, mixed metals, enamel, ceramics, and other media. Works associated with the Taxco School are held in major museum collections. LACMA maintains extensive holdings by Spratling, Pineda, Aguilar, Margot de Taxco, Los Castillo, and other designers. The Metropolitan Museum of Art holds silver and silver-and-wood objects by Spratling in its modern and contemporary art collection. The Fowler Museum at UCLA has presented the movement through exhibitions and scholarly publications, including Silver Seduction: The Art of Mexican Modernist Antonio Pineda.