parrot silverplate turquoise plate

The parrot appears in Los Castillo's design vocabulary as early as the first decade of the workshop's operation — Penny C. Morrill documents a Parrot Head Bracelet among its period pieces from approximately 1940-45. This plate carries that animalist motif into a decorative table form, setting the bird against silver plate and anchoring the composition with a turquoise accent.

Los Castillo was founded in 1939 when Antonio Castillo and his brothers left William Spratling's Taller de Las Delicias to establish their own workshop, and it became one of the most prolific silversmithing operations in Taxco. The workshop extended its design program across a wide range of objects: sterling jewelry, mixed-material inlay work incorporating tortoise and crushed stone, and decorative pieces in silver plate produced for a broader market. Turquoise falls naturally within that materials palette. This plate belongs to the latter register of the workshop's output — the same folk-inflected drawing applied to a domestic form at an accessible price point. Pieces of this kind offer a direct encounter with the workshop's ornamental vocabulary.