Bibliography

A working field reference to Mexican silver marks rather than a history: what a stamp looks like, who used it, and roughly when. The chronology of key events near the end is the most reliable published source we have for maker dates, and this catalog prefers it over web sources when the two disagree. Editions run 2001, a revised 2006 from Cicatrix, and this third edition of 2013 from TBR International.

The catalogue of the Fowler Museum's Antonio Pineda retrospective, which ran from August 2008 to March 2009 with close to two hundred works before travelling to the Museum of International Folk Art. 188 pages, with an essay by the curator Ana Elena Mallet. Nothing else on Pineda approaches it, and it is the source for the workshop hallmark sequence used to date his pieces.

The earliest serious survey of Mexican jewelry, written while most of the makers in this catalog were still working, which makes it a primary account as much as a secondary one. Still in print from University of Texas Press and scanned at the Internet Archive, so it is the most accessible of the older references.

The only monograph on Héctor Aguilar and his Taller Borda, and the single largest source behind this catalog. Because Morrill reconstructs the whole Taxco scene around Aguilar rather than isolating him, it is also the densest published source on Valentín Vidaurreta and on Los Castillo, who recur throughout. One bibliographic snag worth knowing: the title page reads 1996 while most booksellers list ISBN 9780887409615 as 1997. Cite by ISBN.

Published with the San Antonio Museum of Art for the Maestros de Plata exhibition. The standard scholarly treatment of Spratling's workshop and the designers trained inside it, and the Spratling reference most often cited by other writers.

The general survey of the field and the usual starting point. Covers every major Taxco workshop rather than one maker, which makes it the book to reach for when you do not yet know who made a piece. Caution on citations: it exists as the 1994 first edition, a revised 1999, and a fourth edition in 2007, and the pagination moves between them, so a page number is meaningless unless the edition travels with it. Page references in this catalog are to the 1994 unless stated.

The practical authentication guide. Organised around telling a genuine Spratling from a later copy or an outright fake, with the construction details and mark variations that distinguish them. The most useful book here if you are holding a piece and trying to decide what it is.

A photographic survey of Spratling's output. Valued for the plates rather than the text, and useful for matching a form you are trying to identify.

The centennial reissue of the 1990 photographic survey, published for the hundredth anniversary of Spratling's birth.

A biography of Spratling the man rather than a study of the objects: how he came to Taxco, how the workshop was financed, and how it fell apart. Read it for context and motive, not for attribution.