Floral Bracelet

Flowers run across this silver bracelet in the MATL workshop's folk-rooted idiom, the floral motif being one of the small set of subjects most identified with the mark. Worked in the shop's dense, baroque manner, the band carries that vocabulary at the scale of substantial wrist ornament.

Morrill names flowers, alongside the dove and tiny bells, as recurring motifs central to Matilde Poulat's designs and reminiscent of the whimsical subjects of Mexican folk art (Morrill, p. 216). The choice reflected the broader post-Revolution embrace of Pre-Conquest and pueblo sources over European ones (Morrill, p. 216).

Poulat introduced the "MATL" mark in 1934, and the workshop's baroque repoussé forms were distinctive enough to leave their mark on the young Castillos during their brief time in the shop (Morrill, p. 83). Floral bracelets surface only occasionally, the motif making them readily identifiable as the workshop's hand.