Circular Crown Brooch

The drama of this circular brooch is in its surface: raised hemispherical bosses arranged outward from a central dome, their polished crowns catching light against the deeply oxidized channels and engraved scrollwork between them. A scalloped outer rim marked with incised stars completes the medallion composition, the whole worked in repoussé on 925 silver and given the dark patina that was characteristic of the Castillo aesthetic — not an afterthought but the finishing step that turns relief into contrast.

Los Castillo was producing sterling repoussé pins in this idiom by the early 1940s; Penny C. Morrill documents the workshop's pin output of that period in *Silver Masters of Mexico* (1996), noting repoussé construction and 925 silver as consistent features. The radial, boss-centered organization of this example belongs to the Pre-Columbian formal vocabulary the workshop drew on broadly — a sensibility Morrill traces across the Castillos' objects of that decade, from pins to boxes to larger decorative work.

An example that retains the depth and integrity of its original surface treatment rewards the attention the Castillo workshop clearly gave it.