turquoise snake necklace

Few motifs in the Taller Matl's repertoire carry the symbolic weight of the coiling serpent. This sterling and turquoise snake necklace — stamped MATL HECHO EN MEXICO on the interior of the clasp — sits at the center of what the workshop did best: drawing on pre-Conquest Mesoamerican iconography and rendering it in oxidized silver with a craftsmanship that could satisfy both the indigenous revival and the international collector.

The entire body of the serpent is built from overlapping repoussé scales, each pressed and chased individually so that the surface reads as continuous, rippling movement. Patinated to a deep graphite tone, the raised relief catches light along the edges of each scale while the recesses remain dark, creating strong dimensional contrast at every angle. Turquoise stones appear at the head — lending the creature its eyes and accent — and again at the opposing terminus, a detail that gives the piece visual closure and echoes the ancient Aztec and Mixtec use of the stone in sacred adornment. At sixteen and a half inches in length the necklace drapes naturally, the articulated body following the collarbone.

Morrill documents that Matilde Poulat drew primary design inspiration from the Mixtec gold jewelry excavated at Monte Albán in 1932, finding in that material a model for indigenous motifs treated with fine-metalsmithing rigor (Morrill and Berk, Mexican Silver, 1994, p. 216). The turquoise setting is equally grounded in workshop tradition: Poulat's nephew and close collaborator Ricardo Salas perfected the carving and inlay of turquoise and other stones as a core taller skill, and the quality of the stone placement in the snake pieces reflects that specialization directly.