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Decorative tableware occupied a meaningful corner of the Los Castillo output alongside the jewelry and hollowware that defined the workshop's reputation. This fish plate, in silver plate, belongs to the table-object tradition the Castillo family developed after founding their taller in 1939, when the four Castillo brothers left their Spratling apprenticeships at the Taller de las Delicias to strike out on their own.
The fish motif reflects the naturalistic design vocabulary that ran through Los Castillo work from the workshop's earliest decades. Silver plate rather than sterling was the material here, placing this piece within the decorative objects the workshop produced across a range of price points alongside its sterling production. Morrill records that at its height the taller employed more than three hundred fifty artisans and introduced over five hundred new designs in a single year, the design inventory extending well beyond jewelry into objects for the table (Morrill, 1996).
Pieces like this plate document a dimension of Los Castillo production that sterling alone does not capture.
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