Bird Earrings with Turquoise and Coral

A pair of bird earrings in worked silver set with turquoise and coral, these draw on the avian imagery most closely tied to the MATL workshop. The dove and other birds, along with flowers and tiny bells, were among Matilde Poulat's chosen motifs, echoing the whimsical subjects of Mexican folk art (Morrill, p. 216).

The figural approach reflects Poulat's painter's eye, trained at the San Carlos Academy before she turned to silver as part of the post-Revolution search for a Mexican aesthetic (Morrill, p. 216). The turquoise and coral reflect the stones the taller carved and set by hand, a craft Ricardo Salas perfected for the firm (Morrill, p. 216).

Bird earrings of this kind appear only occasionally in our dataset, and they sit close to the heart of the MATL idiom.