Design 5685 Necklace

The design number pressed into the reverse of this pendant — 5685 — places it well into the mature phase of Margot van Voorhies Carr's output under the Margot de Taxco mark. Morrill documents that she was among a select group of Taxco makers who assigned inventory numbers to every design, with lower numbers generally indicating earlier work; a five-thousand designation locates this necklace in the sustained later decades of a studio that ran from the late 1940s through the 1980s. Enamel on sterling was the line she built her reputation around: Morrill records that she perfected and extended the champlevé technique into one of her major bodies of work, producing what she described in her own words as giving women "the stars."

The pendant is compact in scale — one and three-quarter by one and seven-eighth inches — suspended on a sixteen-and-three-quarter-inch sterling chain. Its reverse carries both the full "Margot de Taxco Sterling" mark and the Eagle 22 Mexican government assay stamp, the pair of hallmarks that together confirm registered workshop provenance and sterling content. This consistent double marking is what serious collectors rely on to authenticate her numbered designs against later pieces that lack the full studio mark.

The regularity of its marks and dimensions across recorded appearances points to faithful workshop production — the kind of controlled standardization that characterized how Margot ran her taller through its most productive chapter.