This puzzle necklace and
bracelet by Hector Aguilar is one of his most distinguished
works showing great skill in design and technique, circa
1950-55. Collection Carole A. Berk.
By Leah Shanks Gordon
SAN DIEGO, CALIF. - Chronicling a particularly vibrant and
fertile period in Mexican history, a time when the arts
flourished with the first breath of freedom after the revolution
of 1910, the exhibition "William Spratling and the Mexican Silver
Renaissance" is currently on view at the Mingei International
Museum of Folk Art. Ironically, this renaissance, as it was
expressed in the art of silversmithing, was initiated and
nourished by the American expatriate, Spratling.
The exhibition is a culmination of what has been a growing
interest and respect for Mexican silver spurred by a few avid
collectors, dealers and scholars. Mexican silver of the Twentieth
Century has finally been recognized for the unique aesthetic that
it embodies. Unlike the silver produced in Mexico in earlier
periods, which was largely dependent on colonial and western
European motifs, post-revolutionary Mexican silver is a blend of
the modern and pre-Columbian. It is a decidedly Mexican spirit
that infuses the objects -- a spirit that is bold, powerful and
beautiful.
The exhibition is divided into five parts, the first of which
deals with the scene in Mexico after the revolution. Period
paintings, prints and photographs of the artists, writers and
silver designers who thrived in the 1920s and 1930s are hung
amidst the silver jewelry and objects. Spratling himself is
depicted in a lithograph by David Alfaro Siqueiros. A large
silver brooch by Frederick Davis, another expatriate, is
accompanied by a photograph of Rosa Covarrubias, the wife of
well-known artist Miguel Covarrubias, wearing the pin. In a
photograph by Florence Arquin, a pensive Frida Kahlo is shown
wearing another Davis work, a silver necklace incorporating a
Tlatilco ceramic figure. Also included is a necklace encrusted
with amethyst, turquoise and coral by Matilde Poulat, accompanied
by a photograph taken by Diego Rivera of Frida Kahlo wearing a
similar necklace.
A butterfly necklace, one of the earliest known examples of
Spratling's work, is among several butterfly pieces that greet
the viewer. The butterfly, a popular motif in Mexican art, has
special meaning from the time of the Aztecs. They believed the
butterfly represented the souls of women who died in childbirth
or warriors who died on the battlefield.
The artist Roberto Montenegro painted cosmetics founder Helena
Rubenstein shortly after Spratling designed the necklace she
wears here especially for her. Collection of Helena Rubenstein
Foundation.
The period of the 1920s nurtured some of Mexico's greatest
artists -- the muralists Diego Rivera and David Alfaro Siqueiros,
artists Miguel Covarrubias, Dr Atl (Gerardo Murillo), Roberto
Montenegro and, of course, the legendary Frida Kahlo, wife of
Rivera and an artist in her own right. It was also a time when
Americans suddenly noticed a long-ignored neighbor to the south.
Americans became fascinated with Mexico. They saw it not only as
a place for a vacation, but as a land of beauty and a unique
culture blending Spanish colonialism with pre-Columbian mystery.
Books and articles about Mexico were being published,
archeological sites were being uncovered and an American
expatriate community was being established.
Into this scene came William Spratling. Born in 1900 in western
New York State, Spratling lost his parents at an early age, and
was sent to Alabama to live with relatives. He showed artistic
talent, but the press of finances took him into the more
practical field of architecture. In 1921, after four years at
Auburn University, he went to work as an instructor at Tulane
University's School of Architecture in New Orleans. Spratling
fell into the bohemian life of the French Quarter, sharing an
apartment with novelist William Faulkner and counting among his
friends the writers Sherwood Anderson and Oliver La Farge. He
began traveling to Mexico in 1926 and made repeated trips there
in the late 1920s, supporting himself by writing books and
articles about Mexico. On one of those trips, he visited Taxco, a
charming mountain town that once had thriving silver mines. He
fell in love with it and subsequently moved there in 1929.
One day in 1931 Spratling was having lunch with Dwight Morrow,
the American ambassador to Mexico, when Morrow commented, "What a
pity, Bill, that of all the thousands of tons of silver sent back
from Taxco to the old world over the centuries, that none of this
ever stayed here nor was utilized to create an industry or
economy for Taxco." In his autobiography, File on
Spratling, Spratling recounted that Morrow's observation
"created a germ of a thought which caused me to bring some
goldsmiths up from Iguala, and to set up what I then thought of
as a single experiment, the making of silver articles in Taxco."
One of those goldsmiths, Artemio Navarrete, recounted in an
interview in 1988 how it all started. "In those days I worked in
Iguala for 25 cents a day, but Don Guillermo offered me one peso
and 25 cents. Of course I accepted his offer immediately. A week
later I moved to Taxco."
Navarrete continued, "Some of the children who lived in the
neighborhood used to come and bathe in the fountain in Don
Guillermo's house. I asked one of them ... to come and work with
me so he could learn the trade. I convinced him and many others
... I would ask them to wash, polish or beat the silver into
sheets. Don Guillermo paid these apprentices 25 cents a day. Tono
Castillo, Antonio Pineda and others, all of them famous artisans
nowadays, were a part of that group of young men."
The second segment of the show, which dates from 1931 to 1939,
deals with the growth and success of Spratling's little
experiment. In the beginning most of the work was inspired by
Aztec sculpture, Mixtcco-Puebla and early colonial codices and
various clay seals that Spratling himself collected. From this
period came the famous jaguar-serpent necklace reminiscent of the
stone carvings of the plumed serpent on the pyramid of
Teotihuacan. Another magnificent necklace was designed for Helena
Rubinstein, the pectoral, which covered Rubinstein's entire
chest; it was based on a colonial silver halo once worn by a
sculpted figure of the Virgin. Later, the artist Roberto
Montenegro painted Rubinstein wearing the necklace.
Out of Spratling's studio came a prototype for a workshop. All
artisans had to be highly skilled in their craft. A director
oversaw all design, quality control and production. The manager
also had the responsibility for seeing that all designs were part
of a harmonious, recognizable style.
Spratling loved to combine native materials with his silver. He
was particularly fond of wood, copper, amethyst, obsidian,
tortoise and, on occasion, even gold. So rose a Spratling style
that was often adopted by other Mexican designers. Spratling
himself complained that if he initiated a new design on Monday,
the other silversmiths in Taxco had copied it by week's end.
As his business grew through the 1930s, Spratling attracted many
young Mexican designers to his workshop and taught them the
trade. Among them: Hector Aguilar, Antonio Pineda, the Castillo
brothers and Valentin Vidaurreta. Eventually, these designers
broke away and opened their own studios, in turn training another
group of artists, including Salvador Teran, Sigi Pineda, Enrique
Ledesma and Margot van Voorhies Carr. They each established their
own styles and their own reputations. Yet their indebtedness to
the maestro was evident. In reality, a Spratling school had been
established.
When Hector Aguilar joined Spratling in 1937, Spratling's
workshop had grown from one silversmith and a handful of teenage
apprentices to nearly 100 craftsmen. Aguilar, who had been a
portrait and landscape photographer, was hired to manage
Spratling's shop. After two years he left to establish his own
business, the Taller Borda. Aguilar's jewelry and hollowware
emphasized the manipulation of line. Penny Morrill writes,
"Hector found delight in heavily formed, contorted twisting
overlapping lines. The thick gauge and purity of the silver
heightened the strong almost organic quality of his jewelry and
decorative objects."
The Castillo brothers, who were known as Los Castillo, trained
with Spratling and in 1939 established their own workshop. Their
style, particularly in the 1940s, was largely derived from
pre-Columbian motifs and executed with a strong and vigorous
imagination. The group also included the wife of Antonio
Castillo, Margot van Voorhies Carr. When Antonio and Margo
separated, she took the name Margot de Taxco, originating her own
specialty, enameled jewelry.
Perhaps the most dynamic jewelry and hollowware came from another
of Spratling's original teenage apprentices, Antonio Pineda. Her
pieces are dramatic with a distinct modern look. Pineda, who was
trained as a painter, uses the repetition of form and line. The
result is jewelry and hollowware that look like pieces of
sculpture worthy of a display cabinet or pedestal.
The third period of the show chronicles the growth of the Mexican
silver industry during World War II and its aftermath. As a
result of the war, Mexico saw an influx of designers from Europe.
Among them was the French silver artist Jean Puiforcat, probably
one of the finest designers of the Twentieth Century. In Mexico,
where he spent the war years, Puiforcat found inspiration in the
bold forms of Aztec art and from that inspiration created some of
his most gorgeous hollowware.
In her catalog, Penny Chittim Morrill, PhD, writes that Puiforcat
believed that silversmiths have always been creators of an
epoch's style. Consequently, he insisted that pieces be simple,
functional, perfectly crafted and express the artist's original
intention. A religious man who detested city life and spent most
of his time at his country home outside Biarritz, Puiforcat
reduced his forms to basics, believing that simple geometry was a
key to beautiful design. "The Number," he once wrote, "presides
over the architecture of the heavens and the spiral of the conch
shell, the crystals of the snowflake and the position of the
leaves along a branch." From this mystical and essential element
Puiforcat derived his creative process.
This sauce bowl and spoon by Jean Puiforcat were conceived
during the war years while Puiforcat lived in Mexico.
Collection Robert and Elizabeth Pettus/Things Finer.
From 1950 to 1970, the fourth period of the exhibition, the
Mexican silver industry matured. The designs took on a
contemporary look with clean lines, simple, nonrepresentational
forms, influenced by Scandinavian design and, in particular, the
work of Georg Jensen. Spratling continued to turn out hollowware
and jewelry, including his famous jaguar brooch in silver and
tortoise. Then early one August morning in 1967, after a heavy
night's rain, he got into his Mustang and asked his chauffeur to
drive to Mexico City. He was taking some of his latest work to a
shop there and also intended to see an exhibit of Siqueiros'. As
the car rounded a corner of the highway, it swerved to avoid a
fallen tree, crashing into an embankment. Spratling, 66, died a
few hours later.
The silver industry of Mexico has continued to thrive long after
Spratling's death. The fifth and final period of the show covers
the years 1978 to 2001. By this time, union/management disputes
brought an end to most of the workshops. Silversmiths worked out
of small family operations and used wholesalers to represent
them. This system brought about a regrettable decline in design
innovation. Yet several talented artisans have emerged from this
period and are included in the show. They are unquestionably
contemporary designers creating silver for Twenty-First Century
sensibilities. Their names -- Angelica Tapia, Agnes Seebass,
Wolmar Castillo, Tane, Teresa Camino among them -- may not be as
well-known as those of their predecessors, but they are worthy in
their own right of being counted. They carry on a tradition the
best of which is a testament to the renaissance of Mexican
silversmithing.
On view through May 11 at the Mingei, the exhibition was
originally presented at the San Antonio Museum of Art, the
sponsor of the exhibition. Guest curator Penny Chittim Morrill is
a scholar of Latin American art, and a leading authority on
Mexican silver. The exhibition moves to the Los Angeles Craft and
Folk Art Museum (June 14 to September 7), the National Hispanic
Cultural Center of New Mexico in Albuquerque (October 18 to
January 18, 2004) and, finally, the Newcomb Art Gallery, Tulane
University, New Orleans, (March 6 to May 30, 2004), William
Spratling's hometown.
The San Diego Mingei International Museum of Folk Art in Balboa
Park, San Diego, is open Tuesday through Sunday, 10 am to 4 pm;
the museum is closed Monday. Telephone: 619-239-0003
Leah Gordon is a dealer in antique jewelry and objects of
Twentieth Century design. She has published articles on William
Spratling, Georg Jensen and lover's-eye jewelry and has been a
longtime devotee of Mexican silver.
