Design 5201 Bracelet

The design number 5201 is stamped on the back of this enamel-on-sterling bracelet in the manner Morrill documents for Margot de Taxco's output: each number designated a discrete design in the workshop's inventory, and the higher the number, the later in the taller's production it appeared (Morrill & Berk, 1994, p. 15). A number in the five-thousands places this bracelet toward the later decades of the workshop's run — the product of a system Margot maintained with unusual rigor across her entire career.

That system was inseparable from her approach to craft. She wrote specific production instructions for each numbered model — number of dies, color options for the enamel, clasp placement, assembly sequence — and her craftsmen worked from those drawings directly (Morrill & Berk, 1994, p. 168). The champlevé enamel technique she had perfected during her years at Los Castillo became one of her major lines of jewelry after she opened her own taller in 1948 and launched a dedicated enamel offering in 1955. Morrill describes her champlevé bracelets, necklaces, and earrings as "glittering displays of color, texture, and technical perfection" (Morrill & Berk, 1994, p. 166).

The stamped design number allows collectors to place the piece precisely within her output — an accountability that distinguishes her corpus and gives each example a traceable identity within her career.