About
The story of Taxco’s renaissance is one of the great under-appreciated stories in modern art.
The movement
In the 1920s and 1930s, a small silver-mining town in the mountains of Guerrero, Mexico became the center of an extraordinary artistic movement. Designers, sculptors, architects, craftsmen, expatriates, and master artisans came together to create a new visual language - one rooted in Mexican identity, pre-Columbian design, modernism, and hand craftsmanship. The result was a body of work that helped redefine silver not merely as decorative material, but as sculpture, architecture, and cultural expression.
From the workshops of William Spratling, Héctor Aguilar, Antonio Pineda, Margot de Taxco, Matilde Poulat, Los Castillo, and many others emerged one of the most important design movements of the twentieth century - though one that still remains surprisingly absent from mainstream art history.
Why we exist
Museum of Mexican Silver exists because we believe this story deserves a digitally native home.
We are a collective of private collectors, researchers, historians, and admirers who believe the Taxco golden age should be easier to discover, study, preserve, and collect. The great scholars of the field - including Penny Chittim Morrill, Ana Elena Mallet, Bille Hougart, Phyllis Goddard, and others - have done extraordinary work preserving the history and scholarship of this movement through books, exhibitions, museum collections, and decades of research. This project would not be possible without their work.
The gap
But the field still lacks a central, living resource built for the modern era.
Much of the knowledge surrounding Mexican modernist silver remains fragmented across out-of-print books, scattered auction catalogs, museum archives, collector forums, and oral histories. Important pieces routinely pass through the market unidentified or misunderstood. Hallmarks are difficult to decode. Provenance is often lost. Museum-quality works can still occasionally trade for little more than melt value simply because the broader market does not yet fully understand what it is looking at.
What we’re building
We believe that will change.
Our goal is to help build the canonical digital resource for the Taxco renaissance and the broader world of Mexican silver design:
- A living archive of artists, workshops, hallmarks, and masterworks
- Museum-quality object histories and scholarship
- Market transparency and historical context
- Authentication and identification tools
- Auction and provenance research
- A place where longtime experts and new collectors can learn together
A story about people
This is not only a story about jewelry or silver. It is a story about cultural identity, craftsmanship, artistic collaboration, migration, modernism, entrepreneurship, and the creation of beauty through human hands.
It is also, fundamentally, a story about people.
No contemporary figure embodies that spirit more than Federico Jimenez. Federico is a legend unto himself - artist, collector, dealer, teacher, and ambassador for Mexican craftsmanship. Through his work, his generosity, and his eye, he has inspired countless collectors, including us, to look more deeply at the artistry and humanity behind these objects. Many people’s journey into Mexican silver begins with a piece. A surprising number begin with Federico.
Where we’re headed
Museum of Mexican Silver is still early in its journey. Over time, we hope this becomes a place where scholarship, collecting, storytelling, and technology come together to help preserve and expand appreciation for one of the great artistic movements of the modern era.
Further reading
- Bibliography the published sources the catalog draws on.
- The Taxco Story how a remote mining town became the world’s leading center for handwrought silver design.
- Essays longer-form writing on the artists, the market, and the scholarship.
- Dispatches shorter notes on new pieces, research, and the market.
- Market overview total auction volume for the Taxco Golden Age, tracked over time.
