Triple-Amethyst Scrollwork Drop Brooch with Turquoise

A silver pin shows the MATL workshop's ornamented manner in its plainest form, the dense baroque metalwork standing on its own without colored stones. The piece distills the shop's signature surface to a compact wearable scale.

That baroque repoussé was the defining trait of the workshop's silver from its earliest years, distinctive enough to leave its mark on the young Castillos during a brief stint in the shop (Morrill, p. 83). The taller produced an enormous range of jewelry, some three thousand types by Ricardo Salas's recollection, and silver pins were part of that steady output (Morrill, p. 216).

Matilde Poulat introduced the "MATL" mark in 1934 as part of the post-Revolution search for a Mexican aesthetic rooted in folk and Pre-Conquest sources (Morrill, p. 216).