floral necklace

Floral imagery sits at the heart of the Matl design vocabulary. Penny Morrill documents flowers — alongside the dove and tiny bells — as characteristic subjects drawn from the whimsical repertoire of Mexican folk art, a deliberate choice that placed the atelier within the post-Revolution search for a distinctly Mexican aesthetic rather than a European one (*Mexican Silver*, 1994, p. 216). This sterling silver necklace is a direct expression of that founding premise.

Matilde Poulat came to silver through painting, trained at the San Carlos Academy of Fine Arts in Mexico City, and a painterly attention to organic form is legible in the floral work produced by her taller. Morrill notes the workshop's repoussé tradition as a formative influence on silversmiths who trained there, a heritage that gave the atelier's botanical jewelry its characteristic sculptural presence.

This necklace offers the workshop's most characteristic motif in its primary material.