Fish box

An enamel-and-silver box extends a workshop's vocabulary beyond the jewelry it made famous, translating the color range of Margot de Taxco's celebrated wearable line into a domestic decorative object. The fish motif fits comfortably within the breadth of imagery the studio drew upon: Morrill records that her trained eye surveyed Pre-Columbian sources, Japanese decorative arts, and international Art Deco formalism, adapting each to silver and enamel with equal fluency (Mexican Silver, 1994, p. 168).

The enamel-on-silver line Margot introduced in 1955, seven years after the taller opened above the Taxco zócalo in 1948, was distinguished by technical rigor from the outset (Morrill, p. 168). Sigfrido Pineda oversaw the studio's enameling from 1950, bringing the discipline he had absorbed at Los Castillo to the color surfaces that became the workshop's signature (Morrill, p. 192). That continuity of skilled studio craft is what sets Margot's enamel objects apart from the broader category of mid-century Mexican decorative silver.