Old Mexican Silver

When my mothers’ older sister moved to Mexico City to start a restaurant in the mid 1940s,  (I was 5 or 6) we started visiting her and we always made a trip to nearby Taxco, a silver mining hill town.  Well, this trip to Baja brought up all sort of memories as we went to a jewelry store in Totos Santos run by the grandson of one of the famous designers of silver jewelry of the 40s and 50s in Taxco,   We bought a pair of earrings there (our friend had previously purchased a fan necklace and earring  set for his granddaughter Eleanor after hearing the story how it was designed for Eleanor Roosevelt who gave permission to the silver smiths to market it to anyone).   Well I got home to Seattle and started reading about the industry.  I am not a “jewelry person” but love the designs, and learned that it was an American , William Spratling who moved to Mexico in 1930 and saw that even tho Taxco was mining lots of very good silver, there was not an industry of designers creating work there.   So he started the mexican silver industry!  And discovered among other artists, Ana Brilanti, the grandmother of the owner of the shop in Todos Santos.   About now I went to my drawers and dug out all the Mexican silver that I have —my Mom’s and my aunts from the 40s and 50s, and I also got a couple of silver books from the Seattle library.   And lo and behold there are several pieces of the original Spratling brand from the 40s!   Who knew.     My Mom and my aunt had much more good taste than money so they must have been inexpensive then.  The blip is a picture of one old pin in the library  book with my dug out piece and the extra is a drawing that Spratling did for another australian american designer in NYC , Silsan ,who then made costume jewelry with  other metals to be sold in the USA.   Oh my, now I need blipper PaulaJ to do this research.   There are lots of pieces,.. My favorites have aztec designs.… what to do about them?…I hardly ever wear jewelry except earrings ..  Think I”ll stop here but you might hear more later……I'll definitely have a page for my Mom book. :-)


other extra...how strange our dock looks with all the boats gone while it gets replaced.   will blip before and after.. in about a month.


managed to get just 2 pages for Baja Part ll on flickr  (lots of golf course for friends and family who were interested...)

Whew,  tomorrow we're off to the island...