// Workers AI · dad joke modeWhat did Los Castillo say to the wall? "You're a great cast for our support.
| Type | Workshop (taller) |
|---|---|
| Industry | Silverwork, jewelry, decorative arts |
| Founded | 1939 in Taxco, Guerrero, Mexico |
| Founders | Antonio Castillo Jorge "Chato" Castillo Miguel Castillo Justo "Coco" Castillo Margot van Voorhies Carr Salvador Terán |
| Defunct | 1995 |
| Headquarters | , Mexico |
| Products | Jewelry, hollowware, flatware, furniture, architectural decoration |
Number of employees | More than 300 (peak, 1940s) |
Los Castillo was a Mexican silver, jewelry, and decorative-arts workshop founded in Taxco, Guerrero, in 1939. It was established by the silversmith Antonio Castillo with his brothers Jorge "Chato" Castillo, Miguel Castillo, and Justo "Coco" Castillo, his wife Margot van Voorhies Carr, and his first cousin Salvador Terán.[1][2] The Castillo brothers had trained at William Spratling's Taller de Las Delicias and became part of the first generation of independent workshop proprietors associated with the Taxco school of silver design.[3] All four brothers received a full commercial and technical training at Las Delicias; Miguel Castillo went on to serve as a general administrator during the Second World War, with responsibility for more than four hundred workers.[4]
Los Castillo produced jewelry, flatware, hollowware, furniture, architectural decoration, and decorative objects. The workshop became particularly known for experimentation with mixed metals, stone and shell mosaic, silver applied to wood, enamel, and pluma azteca, a technique incorporating colored feathers behind pierced metal.[5][2] Its work combined pre-Columbian imagery, Mexican flora and fauna, Art Nouveau, Art Deco, and later modernist abstraction.
During the Second World War, Los Castillo expanded to employ more than 300 workers and produced identification bracelets and chains for American military personnel.[6][7] The large workshop contracted following labor disputes and changing economic conditions in the late 1950s, but Los Castillo continued on a reduced basis until 1995.[8]
Founding and early history
[edit]Antonio Castillo and his brothers were among the young Taxco craftsmen trained at William Spratling's Taller de Las Delicias. The early workshop was supervised by master silversmiths from nearby Iguala, including Artemio Navarrete and Alfonso Mondragón, and developed a structured apprenticeship system through which young workers learned cutting, soldering, repoussé, chasing, engraving, and other specialized skills.[9][10]
The brothers’ association with Las Delicias was not continuous. The family had come originally from Veracruz and moved from Taxco to Toluca when their father was transferred, and none of the brothers appears in a photograph of the workshop taken in 1934. During the period near Mexico City, Antonio and Jorge worked for about six months at the Taller Matl with Matilde Poulat and Ricardo Salas; Morrill and Berk suggest that the baroque repoussé forms Jorge helped produce there informed his early work at Los Castillo. The brothers subsequently returned to Las Delicias, where Antonio became a maestro.[11]
Antonio Castillo became a master silversmith at Las Delicias. In 1939, he left Spratling's workshop and established Los Castillo with members of his family and close collaborators. The founding group included his brothers Jorge "Chato" Castillo, Miguel Castillo, and Justo "Coco" Castillo, Margot van Voorhies Carr, and Salvador Terán.[1][2]
Margot, who had married Antonio Castillo after meeting him in Taxco in 1937, became the principal designer during the workshop's early period. She prepared drawings that Antonio and the workshop's silversmiths translated into three-dimensional silver objects. Her early designs frequently drew upon Japanese art and natural forms, including fish, waves, shells, flowers, and foliage.[12] The Los Angeles County Museum of Art attributes several early Los Castillo necklaces and bracelets to Margot's design direction.[13][14]
Early Los Castillo jewelry included sculptural silver forms, floral and animal motifs, pieces set with amethyst and other stones, and designs influenced by Mexican colonial ornament and pre-Columbian art. The workshop also developed an extensive cataloguing system in which models were assigned inventory numbers.[15]
The original shop and workshop were established on the Plazuela Bernal in Taxco, which remained the firm’s principal showroom for more than fifty years. During the 1950s Antonio Castillo acquired the Hotel Los Arcos and Los Castillo opened a further shop there, and by 1969 the company also occupied premises in Mexico City on Amberes and Juárez.[16]
Designers and silversmiths
[edit]Los Castillo operated as a collaborative taller. Although the workshop's objects ordinarily carried a Los Castillo hallmark, their designs and fabrication could involve several family members, designers, master silversmiths, apprentices, and specialists.
Antonio Castillo
[edit]Antonio Castillo directed the business and workshop and remained closely involved in design, production, and relations with clients. His training at Las Delicias gave him the technical ability to interpret drawings and guide their execution in metal. He also recruited and trained craftsmen who later established independent careers.[15]
Margot van Voorhies Carr
[edit]Margot served as the leading designer during the workshop's first years. Her designs contributed an emphasis on organic line, Japanese-derived imagery, flowers, fish, shells, and curving forms. After the end of her marriage to Antonio Castillo, she left Los Castillo and established the independent workshop Margot de Taxco. Several silversmiths associated with Los Castillo followed her, including Miguel Meléndez and Sigi Pineda.[17][18]
LACMA describes Margot as the lead designer at Los Castillo before she opened her own workshop following the couple's divorce.[19]
Jorge "Chato" Castillo
[edit]Jorge "Chato" Castillo was regarded by fellow Taxco silversmiths as one of the workshop's most technically inventive designers. His work ranged from representational pre-Columbian figures to mixed-metal abstraction. The Fowler Museum catalogue describes him as one of Taxco's outstanding designers because of the aesthetic range of his work.[20]
Chato was closely associated with the development of metales casados, or married metals, in which different metals were cut and joined into a single flush surface. William Spratling later credited Jorge Castillo with generating the principal ideas behind Los Castillo's experimentation with married metals, stone mosaic, and related mixed-material processes.[21] Morrill and Berk credit him with coining the term metales casados and with developing a range of related processes, among them divorced metals, feathers set behind silver, stone and abalone inlay, silver-encrusted onyx, blued steel and metal painting. He also devised an alloy he called rex, composed of five percent silver, forty-five percent brass and fifty percent copper, which the workshop used alongside nickel, gold, silver, copper, brass, alpaca and monel to widen its range of metal colors.[22]
Justo "Coco" Castillo
[edit]Justo "Coco" Castillo worked as a designer and silversmith and was particularly associated with repoussé and enamel production. He participated in the technical development of the workshop's jewelry and decorative objects.[23] In 1935, while still at Las Delicias, he won first prize in the first design competition Spratling organized for his silversmiths, with a necklace, bracelet and earrings built from pierced and heavily worked oval beads. Fellow craftsmen called the bead a cocol, and the comparison gave him his lifelong nickname.[11]
Salvador Terán
[edit]Salvador Terán, a first cousin of the Castillo brothers, was a founding member of Los Castillo and worked there for approximately thirteen years as a designer and workshop manager. His designs were sold under the Los Castillo hallmark rather than under his own name.[24][25]
Terán left in 1952 and established an independent workshop in Mexico City. His later work continued his interest in overlapping planes, oxidized surfaces, stone mosaic, and large-scale decorative compositions.[26]
Workshop craftsmen
[edit]Craftsmen documented in the early workshop included Miguel Meléndez, Elpidio Morales, Leopoldo Betancourt, Roberto Abilez, Enrique Urilee, Carlos Mejía, Macedonio Martínez, Bertín Juárez, Enrique Betancourt, and Ángel Rodríguez.[24]
Miguel Meléndez joined Los Castillo around 1940 and worked there for approximately fifteen years. He collaborated with the Los Castillo silversmith Reveriano Castillo in developing enamel on silver and later joined Margot de Taxco. Other craftsmen remained with Los Castillo for several decades, including José Vaena, Roberto Olivares, and Flumencio Estrada, known as Maestro Mencho. Others stayed only briefly: Enrique Ledesma worked at Los Castillo for about three years before opening his own taller.[24]
Techniques and materials
[edit]Los Castillo became known for combining traditional handwrought silversmithing with experimental materials and techniques. The workshop's production included sterling and higher-purity silver, copper, brass, wood, enamel, feathers, abalone, mother-of-pearl, malachite, turquoise, chrysoprase, onyx, amethyst, and other stones.
Married metals
[edit]In metales casados, pieces of differently colored metal—commonly silver, copper, brass, and sometimes other alloys—were cut precisely and joined to form a single continuous surface. The technique allowed the workshop to approach metal as a painter might approach colored planes on a canvas.[5][27]
The workshop received first prize at the 1953 Silver Fair for a mixed-metal design. Artist Rufino Tamayo presented Los Castillo with a watercolor commemorating the award; its parrot image incorporated a brooch combining four metals and two stones.[28]
Divorced metals
[edit]Los Castillo also developed objects in which contrasting metals remained visibly separate or were mounted above a wooden ground. In this approach, sometimes called "divorced metals", metal forms were raised from the background on small pegs, creating the appearance that the figures floated above the surface.[29]
Stone and shell mosaic
[edit]The workshop adapted stone-mosaic techniques associated with pre-Columbian artisans. Thin pieces of malachite, turquoise, chrysoprase, abalone, or other material were cut and fitted into recessed areas defined by raised silver contours. The technique was used in jewelry, boxes, pitchers, vases, handles, and architectural decoration.[28] A surviving Los Castillo catalogue page of about 1945 markets these pieces as "Aztec mosaic" and assigns an inventory number to each design, among them an ensemble the workshop named "The Clouds of Tepoztlán".[16]
A Los Castillo box in LACMA's collection combines rosewood, malachite, copper, brass, silver, and possibly monel, demonstrating the workshop's use of mosaic and mixed-metal imagery in decorative objects.[30]
Pluma azteca
[edit]Pluma azteca incorporated colored feathers behind pierced or cut-out metal. The feathers supplied intense areas of color while remaining protected behind a transparent covering. The technique referred to pre-Columbian featherwork while adapting it to modern jewelry and decorative objects.[5][2]
Enamel
[edit]Los Castillo experimented with enamel on silver during the 1940s. Miguel Meléndez and Reveriano Castillo were among the craftsmen involved in its technical development. Margot later expanded enamel production in her independent workshop, while the Los Castillo experiments formed an important technical precedent.[23]
Jewelry and decorative arts
[edit]Los Castillo produced necklaces, bracelets, brooches, rings, earrings, cuff links, belt buckles, and complete jewelry sets. The workshop also created pitchers, bowls, trays, boxes, flatware, serving objects, candlesticks, tea and coffee services, wall panels, furniture, and architectural installations.
The work ranged stylistically from naturalistic Art Nouveau flowers to Art Deco geometry, pre-Columbian figures, animals, and mid-century mixed-metal abstraction. The Fowler Museum catalogue identifies floral silver and amethyst pieces as among the workshop's most recognizable early designs.[2]
Los Castillo's hollowware often treated natural forms as both decoration and structure. A documented mixed-metal pitcher uses a large philodendron leaf as an ornamental element, an ice guard, and part of the handle, combining sculptural presentation with function.[28]
The workshop also produced wall plaques and architectural panels. In some works, pierced or applied metal imagery was combined with dark resin or wooden backgrounds to create a form of metal painting.[31]
Wartime expansion and commercial success
[edit]The Second World War created extensive demand for Mexican silver after American retailers lost access to European suppliers. Los Castillo expanded rapidly and employed more than 300 workers at its height.[6][7]
The workshop produced large quantities of identification bracelets and chains for the dog tags of American service personnel. It also supplied jewelry and decorative objects to Mexican and foreign clients.[6][7]
The growth of the workshop depended upon a division of labor among designers, master silversmiths, apprentices, stone cutters, enamelists, finishers, and other specialists. As with other large Taxco workshops, the Los Castillo hallmark identified the workshop but did not necessarily identify every individual responsible for the design or fabrication of an object.
Awards and commissions
[edit]Los Castillo participated in Taxco's annual Silver Fair and received prizes for design and technical execution. Its mixed-metal work received first prize in 1953, and the workshop received the Spratling Prize at the twenty-third National Silver Festival in 1960.[32]
The workshop also undertook public and private commissions. During the early 1970s President Luis Echeverría commissioned six married-metal boxes from Los Castillo as gifts for European heads of state. Antonio Castillo offered to supply them at no cost if any European silversmith could reproduce the technique; by his account none could, and the president congratulated the workshop on his return.[33]
Its architectural and decorative commissions extended the workshop's techniques beyond wearable jewelry into interiors, murals, plaques, furniture, and large objects.
Labor dispute and reduced operation
[edit]By the mid-1950s, Taxco's large workshops faced declining tourism, changing export markets, higher operating costs, and new labor obligations. Los Castillo reduced its workforce by approximately half and shifted remaining workers toward piecework.[8]
A strike in 1957–1958 followed reduced hours, salary arrears, and disagreement over employment guarantees. An agreement transferred machinery, tools, and rights to produce many Los Castillo designs to a workers' cooperative. The cooperative later dissolved, and its equipment was auctioned by the Mexican social-security authorities.[8]
Los Castillo subsequently resumed operations on a smaller scale with approximately thirty workers. The formal workshop continued until 1995.[8]
Later generations
[edit]Antonio Castillo's children continued aspects of the family's design and workshop traditions. Emilia "Mimi" Castillo developed work combining silver with ceramics and collaborated with ceramic specialists to create objects in which silver was incorporated into ceramic bodies. Her work was sold in Mexico and the United States, including through Neiman Marcus.[34]
Wolmar Castillo studied graphic design and maintained connections with contemporary Mexican and international art. The work of the later Castillo generation broadened the family's production beyond the forms and techniques associated with the original workshop.[34]
Legacy
[edit]Los Castillo was one of the principal workshops of the Taxco school of silver design. Its importance lay not only in the volume and quality of its production but in the workshop's sustained experimentation with metals, stones, shell, feathers, enamel, wood, and architectural surfaces.
The workshop also served as a training and collaborative environment for designers and silversmiths who later established independent careers, including Margot de Taxco, Salvador Terán, Enrique Ledesma, and Sigi Pineda. Because much of their early work was sold under the Los Castillo hallmark, the history of the workshop also illustrates the collaborative nature of attribution within the large Taxco taller system.
Los Castillo objects are held in museum collections including the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, whose holdings include jewelry and decorative objects designed by Margot and other workshop contributors.[35]
See also
[edit]References
[edit]- 1 2 Morrill & Berk 1998, pp. 82–85.
- 1 2 3 4 5 Quick & Richter 2008, p. 98.
- ↑ Stromberg 2008, pp. 39–47.
- ↑ Morrill & Berk 1998, p. 82.
- 1 2 3 Morrill & Berk 1998, pp. 86–92.
- 1 2 3 Morrill & Berk 1998, pp. 89–91.
- 1 2 3 Stromberg 2008, p. 47.
- 1 2 3 4 Stromberg 2008, pp. 54–59.
- ↑ Morrill & Berk 1998, pp. 33–43.
- ↑ Stromberg 2008, pp. 29–30.
- 1 2 Morrill & Berk 1998, p. 83.
- ↑ Morrill & Berk 1998, pp. 81–84.
- ↑ "Large Shell Necklace (Collar con conchas grandes)". Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Retrieved 26 July 2026.
- ↑ "Fish and Waves Bracelet (Pulsera con peces y olas)". Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Retrieved 26 July 2026.
- 1 2 Morrill & Berk 1998, pp. 81–86.
- 1 2 Morrill & Berk 1998, p. 84.
- ↑ Morrill & Berk 1998, pp. 83–85.
- ↑ Morrill & Berk 1998, pp. 165–170.
- ↑ "Netsuke Brooch". Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Retrieved 26 July 2026.
- ↑ Quick & Richter 2008, p. 38.
- ↑ Morrill & Berk 1998, pp. 90–94.
- ↑ Morrill & Berk 1998, p. 86.
- 1 2 Morrill & Berk 1998, pp. 83–86.
- 1 2 3 Morrill & Berk 1998, pp. 84–86.
- ↑ Morrill & Berk 1998, pp. 205–207.
- ↑ Morrill & Berk 1998, pp. 205–211.
- ↑ Stromberg 2008, pp. 41–43.
- 1 2 3 Morrill & Berk 1998, pp. 86–89.
- ↑ Morrill & Berk 1998, pp. 87–89.
- ↑ "Box (Caja)". Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Retrieved 26 July 2026.
- ↑ Morrill & Berk 1998, pp. 87–92.
- ↑ Morrill & Berk 1998, pp. 89–94.
- ↑ Morrill & Berk 1998, pp. 86, 89–92.
- 1 2 Stromberg 2008, pp. 58–59.
- ↑ "Browse the Collection: Los Castillo". Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Retrieved 26 July 2026.
Bibliography
[edit]- Morrill, Penny Chittim; Berk, Carole A. (1998). Mexican Silver: 20th Century Handwrought Jewelry & Metalwork (Revised ed.). Atglen, Pennsylvania: Schiffer Publishing. ISBN 9780764306631.
- Quick, Betsy D.; Richter, Kim (2008). "Silver of the Taxco School". In Stromberg, Gobi (ed.). Silver Seduction: The Art of Mexican Modernist Antonio Pineda. Los Angeles: Fowler Museum at UCLA. pp. 83–129. ISBN 9780977834402.
- Stromberg, Gobi (2008). Silver Seduction: The Art of Mexican Modernist Antonio Pineda. Los Angeles: Fowler Museum at UCLA. ISBN 9780977834402.