Silver, Rosewood, and Metales Casados Box

A standing figure drawn from the pre-Columbian past commands the lid of this box, cut in warm copper and brass against a ground of blue stone mosaic. Two techniques that defined Los Castillo among the Taxco workshops meet on this single surface: the inlay of married metals, where silver, copper, and brass are joined into one worked sheet, and lapidary mosaic, in which cut stone is set into metal to build an image in color.

Founded in 1939 by the Castillo brothers after they left William Spratling, Los Castillo became the Taxco house most closely identified with mixed-metal and stone-mosaic work, carrying pre-Columbian imagery onto trays, boxes, and hollowware as readily as onto jewelry (Morrill, Mexican Silver, 1994). Here that vocabulary serves a functional object: a silver-edged box whose hinged lid lifts to a rosewood interior divided into two compartments, the warm grain of the wood set against the cool stone of the cover.

The reverse is struck with the circular LOS CASTILLO TAXCO mark, the model number 331, and HECHO EN MEXICO. The married-metals figure, the stone-set ground, and the mark place the box within Los Castillo's mid-century production of decorative objects.