Double Swirl Necklace

This is a commanding early Los Castillo collar in which weight, articulation, and relief do the work of ornament. At nineteen inches long, one and three-quarter inches wide, and 255 grams, it is not a delicate chain but a sculptural band: interlinked silver plaques rise into shell- or plume-like forms, their surfaces animated by raised double scrolls, darkened recesses, and small domed bosses that punctuate the rhythm of each link. The reverse plaque is stamped 980 LOS CASTILLO TAXCO 262, a combination that matters. Morrill and Berk identify the block-letter Los Castillo mark with 980 as an extremely rare and very early workshop mark, and note elsewhere that numbered stamps on the backs of Los Castillo jewelry designated inventory designs, with lower numbers generally earlier in the sequence. This numbered design is known as the Pre-Columbian inspired Double Swirl necklace, with riveted links and a hook clasp, dated to circa 1940. The present necklace's 980 standard gives the metal a softer, whiter presence than ordinary sterling, well suited to the broad polished ridges and oxidized channels that make the pattern legible across the neck.

The object also stands close to the formative Margot van Voorhies Carr phase of Los Castillo. Morrill records that many early Los Castillo pieces were unmistakably designed by Margot, and that some designs later associated with Margot de Taxco were first developed while she was still at Los Castillo. LACMA's holdings reinforce that context: its circa 1940 Los Castillo Large Shell Necklace, attributed in design to Margot, is described as a silver collar of domed links with carved ridges and scroll curls; LACMA also holds Margot's Fish and Waves Necklace, designed for Los Castillo, where scrolling water and repeated units create the same sense of continuous motion. This necklace should therefore be understood not merely as a beautiful Taxco collar, but as part of the workshop's early exploration of relief, rhythm, and articulated mass, an exploration in which silver becomes both body ornament and moving pattern.

This necklace is particularly significant because it captures Los Castillo at the point when the workshop was becoming one of the central engines of the Mexican silver renaissance. Morrill records that Los Castillo was founded in 1939 after Antonio Castillo, Margot van Voorhies Carr, the Castillo brothers, and Salvador Terán left Spratling's Taller de Las Delicias; she further describes Los Castillo as one of the great Taxco workshops, employing more than 350 artisans and designers at its height and producing approximately two hundred kilos of silver jewelry and objects each week. Yet this collar shows that scale did not require anonymity or dilution. Its repeated links are carefully composed, individually dimensional, and engineered for movement, preserving the intimacy of hand-wrought silver within the presence of a major workshop production. This piece is especially valuable as an early pure-silver Los Castillo statement, distinct from the later fame of the taller's married metals, feather inlay, mosaico, and enamel innovations. It documents the workshop's foundational jewelry language before color and mixed media became dominant identifiers. Its survival with the 980 mark, workshop name, Taxco stamp, and design number intact makes it both a visually powerful object and a documentary anchor for early Los Castillo design.