Design 5554 Cuff Links

Design 5554 places these sterling and enamel cufflinks within Margot de Taxco's formally numbered design vocabulary. The numbered registry, sustained across nearly four decades of her Taxco workshop, marks each piece as a developed design rather than an improvised one-off, and cufflinks occupy one of the quieter corners of that catalog.

Enamel on sterling was the medium Margot built her identity around. As Morrill documents in Mexican Silver, she perfected the champlevé technique — first initiated by the smiths at Los Castillo — and built it into a defining jewelry line, the results producing what Morrill calls "glittering displays of color, texture, and technical perfection" (p. 166). Her range drew from Japanese art, Pre-Columbian motifs, and Art Deco line work in roughly equal measure (p. 168), a synthesis that gave her enamel pieces a visual intelligence that a small format like the cufflink could carry as effectively as a broad collar or cuff.

A numbered example in this wearable format adds a dimension that her more common necklaces, bracelets, and earrings do not represent.