Mask Plaque Pendant

Gilding silver to a warm gold tone, this vermeil pendant shows the MATL workshop reaching beyond its familiar bright-silver-and-turquoise palette toward a richer, more golden surface. The form is a pendant meant to hang at the chest, the vermeil finish lending it the look of the Mixtec gold that lay behind so much of the workshop's imagination.

That reach back to ancient goldwork was deliberate. Matilde Poulat, trained as a painter at the San Carlos Academy before silver took over, introduced the "MATL" mark in 1934 and found inspiration, Morrill notes, in the Mixtec gold uncovered at Monte Alban in 1932, alongside the dove, flowers, and bells of Mexican folk art (Morrill, p. 216). A gilded pendant evokes that source directly.

After Poulat's death in 1960, her nephew Ricardo Salas carried the style forward under the "MATL Salas" mark, so the stamp helps date any piece. The appeal is seeing the MATL hand in gold tones rather than white silver, closer to the pre-Conquest jewelry that fed it.