Fish Bracelet

A fish rendered in vitreous enamel on sterling, banded around the wrist, is one of the figural subjects that suited Margot de Taxco's enamel line especially well: a clear silhouette that could carry flat fields of saturated color across linked panels. The champlevé enamel-on-silver technique behind such a piece was initiated at Los Castillo by Reveriano Castillo and Miguel Melendez and then perfected by Margot, who developed it into one of her major lines of jewelry (Morrill, p. 166).

Margot designed everything her company produced and worked to written specifications: a book of per-piece instructions covering the number of dies, the color choices for the enameling, and the sequence of assembly and finishing, with her drawings serving as templates for the enamelers (Morrill, p. 168). A bracelet like this is the product of that system, formed with molds in the workshop and enameled to her color notes, so that the brilliance of the finish was a matter of method rather than chance.

Her own phrase for what she was after was that a woman wearing her jewelry would be "wearing the stars" (Morrill, p. 166), and the enamel bracelets are where that ambition reads most directly, in glittering displays of color and texture set into precise silverwork.

Its survival in wearable condition reflects the high standard of workmanship Margot held to for every piece she signed.