Double Tulip Brooch

Paired tulips, rendered entirely in silver, give this brooch a piece of garden imagery translated into the disciplined metalwork of the early Taxco workshop. It dates to the first design period of the Taller de las Delicias, the taller Spratling founded in 1931 that Morrill places at the center of the Mexican silver revival (Morrill, p. 14).

Working the whole motif in silver, without applied stone, keeps the focus on form and on the contrast between polished and shadowed surfaces. The doubled blossom is a compact, legible design of the sort the workshop produced in quantity for everyday wear.

All-silver figural pins of this era come to market only occasionally and are collected as examples of the workshop's first-period jewelry vocabulary.