Black and White Mosaic Coffee Service

A five-piece coffee service inlaid in black-and-white mosaic over brass, this set shows Salvador Terán extending his mosaic technique to the full hollowware suite. The restricted palette gives the service a graphic, modern severity, the cut tiles reading as pattern against the wrought metal.

The service belongs to the core of Teran's independent practice. Davis and Pack recorded that, always interested in new materials and both new and old techniques, he was combining metal with mosaic and keeping a large workshop busy with boxes, trays, and other decorative objects (Morrill, p. 206). An orfebreria, in the Taxco vocabulary, is precisely the kind of workshop where larger pieces such as trays and coffee and tea sets were made (Morrill, pdf p. 15), and a coffee service is that capacity at full scale.

Teran's mosaic was rooted in his ambition for large-scale work, including the architectural mosaic mural he executed for Reveriano Castillo's shop that survives today. The coffee service carries that pictorial surface onto functional forms, the black-and-white scheme unifying pots, creamer, and sugar.