William Spratling was the catalytic figure of the Taxco Silver Renaissance: an American architect, writer, designer, and cultural entrepreneur who helped turn a colonial mining town into the twentieth century’s most important center of modern silver design. He arrived in Mexico in the 1920s, moved within the circle of Diego Rivera, David Alfaro Siqueiros, Frances Toor, Dwight Morrow, and other postrevolutionary cultural figures, and founded Taller de Las Delicias in Taxco in 1931.
Spratling’s importance lies less in inventing Mexican silverwork than in organizing it into a modern design system. He drew on Pre-Columbian motifs, colonial forms, local craft, and modernist abstraction, then translated them into bold, handwrought jewelry, hollowware, flatware, and decorative objects. He trained the generation that would define Taxco: Aguilar, Pineda, Los Castillo, Terán, and others all emerged in relation to his workshop.
His work gave Taxco silver its first international vocabulary: heavy gauge, strong silhouettes, visible handwork, high silver content, clear hallmarks, and Mexican identity rendered as modern design. Spratling was not simply a maker. He was the movement’s architect: the figure who fused craft, tourism, nationalism, export commerce, and artistic ambition into a school.
Dispatch · April 27, 2026
How Rare Is William Spratling, Anyways?
Spratling is the most famous name in twentieth-century Mexican silver. Las Delicias was, in its peak years, the largest silver workshop in Mexico. None of that means his pieces are easy to find today. Across the 2,094 named-Spratling lots that have crossed a published auction since 2007, the median clears at $750, the top decile at $2,600, and only fourteen have ever cleared $10,000. Production was numerous. Survival is not.
Dispatch · April 21, 2026
The Jill and Byron Crawford Collection at Bonhams
One couple's Taxco Golden Age jewelry — 119 lots across every major workshop of the era — cleared through two Bonhams sales in 2022 and 2023. The results are a cleaner benchmark for the middle of the market than collectors remember.
Total Sales
1,533
Total Volume
$1.5M
Peak Year
2022 · $242k
Trend
+13% / yr
Taxco · WS · 925
WS · 980
Taxco · WS · 980
Taxco · WS · 980
WS · Taxco · Mexico
Silver
Total auction volume by year.
Taxco · Mexico · WS · 925
Spratling Silver
Made in Mexico · Spratling Silver
WS · Spratling · Made in Mexico · 980
WS · Spratling · Made in Mexico · Spratling Silver
WS · Spratling · Made in Mexico · Spratling Silver
WS · Spratling · Made in Mexico
WS · Spratling · Made in Mexico · Spratling Silver
Spratling Silver · WS · Spratling · Made in Mexico
Spratling Silver · WS · Spratling · Made in Mexico · Reg. 12778
WS · Spratling · Made in Mexico · Sterling
Spratling de Mexico · Sterling
Spratling de Mexico · Sterling · Eagle 13
WS (script) · 925 · Eagle 30
William Spratling · .925 · WS · Taxco·Mexico · Eagle 30
SONJ · Press Dinner · 1964 · Eagle 30
William Spratling · .925 · WS · Taxco·Mexico · Eagle 30
William Spratling · .925 · WS square · Taxco·Mexico · Eagle 63
WS (script) · Eagle 63
.925 · WS script square · ·Taxco·Mexico· · 1737 · Eagle 1
WS · Pat. Pend. · Spratling of Mexico · ·Silson Inc·
WS · Spratling of Mexico · ·Silson Inc·
WS (on wood)
WS (on wood)
WS (on wood)
Taxco · WS (large) · Mexico
Taxco · WS · Mexico
Taxco · WS · Mexico
18K · WS
