Necklace Assembled from Twelve Zodiac Pendants

This object is catalogued as a necklace, but the evidence does not support Margot de Taxco having designed a twelve-panel Zodiac necklace. Morrill and Berk, Mexican Silver: 20th Century Handwrought Jewelry & Metalwork, p. 177 and pl. XVI-27, document Margot's Zodiac designs as separate pendants, one per sign, rather than as a single articulated chain.

The object recorded here appears to be twelve individual Zodiac pendants assembled into a necklace. On present evidence the assembly is graded as a later arrangement of period components, not an authored Margot design. The original photographs and the hallmark on each pendant should be compared side by side before the components are described, or separated, with any greater confidence.

Each pendant carries one zodiac sign in champlevé enamel on silver. Margot's reliance on enamel, and on iconographic rather than abstract motifs, distinguishes her output from the silver-forward work of Spratling, Aguilar and the Castillos. Her atelier on Calle de los Plateros was established in 1948, after her separation from Antonio Castillo, and operated independently for roughly three decades.

Claims carried in the earlier version of this record — that scholarship routinely cites "the necklace," that intact examples are extremely rare, and that it is a defining work for any collection representing the Taxco school — were unsourced and have been removed.