Copper and silver metales casados bowl with mask motif
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This bowl is one of Victoria's most famous designs. It was featured in Mexican Silver by Morrill and Berk, (P.120). It is a particularly strong example of Ana Núñez Brilanti's married-metals work: a shallow copper vessel whose center is animated by a silver overlay mask. The stamped model number gives the object a rare degree of specificity within a workshop best known under the Victoria de Taxco name.
The design uses a frontal, bilaterally balanced mask with scroll terminals, stepped forms, and a pendant element below the chin. Against the warm copper field, the pale silver inlay reads almost graphically, turning the bowl into a compact study in contrast, surface, and Taxco's mid-century fascination with pre-Columbian forms.
Brilanti's workshop is important because Victoria de Taxco sits at the center of the metales casados story, before the technique became more broadly associated with Los Castillo. This bowl records that history in material form: copper and silver are not merely decorative colors here, but the structure of the design itself.
The mark visible on the submitted hallmark photograph reads VICTORIA / MEXICO above METALES and the model number 109. That mark, the object type, and the photographed construction support the catalog attribution to Ana Núñez Brilanti / Victoria de Taxco, circa 1950s to early 1960s.
This particular bowl was given by Ana Nunez Brilanti to her niece, Claudia Brilanti, who then sold it to a collector in Austin, Texas.
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