Dove Fringe Necklace with Turquoise

Doves worked in silver and set with turquoise carry this necklace, drawing on the motif most closely tied to the MATL name. The dove, with flowers and tiny bells, was among Matilde Poulat's signature subjects, reminiscent of the whimsical imagery of contemporary Mexican folk art (Morrill, p. 216).

The necklace pairs that folk vocabulary with the inlaid turquoise the taller was known for. Poulat trained as a painter at the San Carlos Academy before silver became her exclusive medium, and her figural designs grew from the post-Revolution turn toward Mexican sources (Morrill, p. 216).

The turquoise reflects the hand-carved stones Ricardo Salas prepared for the firm's jewelry (Morrill, p. 216).

Dove necklaces appear in our dataset with some regularity, more than the scarcer one-off forms, and they carry the motif most central to MATL design at fuller scale.