Late 20th Century Los Castillo Taxco Mexican Silver Plate Articulated Fish Bottle Opener

Details

Description

Los Castillo Taxco Mexican Silver Plate Articulated Fish Bottle Opener
Circa 1980

Los Castillo of Taxco made this articulated fish … Read more Los Castillo Taxco Mexican Silver Plate Articulated Fish Bottle Opener
Circa 1980

Los Castillo of Taxco made this articulated fish bottle opener in silver plate, modeling it as a swimming fish whose body flexes freely from side to side in the hand. The head is formed as a deep, smoothly polished mask set with a large enamel eye of black on white, and the open mouth carries the crescent lip and the small hooked catch that do the work of the opener. Nine hinged sections follow behind the head, each struck with a band of overlapping scales and studded along the back and belly with applied ball rivets that both pin the sections together and give the fish its ridged dorsal and ventral line. The tail is cast in one piece as a broad crescent fluke with deeply grooved rays, and the marks are struck on its underside.

The articulated fish is among the best known of the plateado wares produced by the Los Castillo workshop, and was made over a long period in several sizes. Later versions were produced in copper and in brass with shell inlay by Emilia Castillo, working from the same family workshop under her own registration.

Dimensions
Length: 7½ inches (19.1 cm)
Width: 1¾ inches (4.4 cm)
Depth: 1¼ inches (3.2 cm)

Marks
Struck on the underside of the tail with a circular stamp reading LOS CASTILLO TAXCO, and separately with PLATEADO, MEXICO, the registration TA-01, and the design number 2.

Provenance
Earle D. Vandekar of Knightsbridge

References
Bille Hougart, The Little Book of Mexican Silver Trade and Hallmarks (TBR International), which records TA-01 as the registration of Antonio Castillo and Los Castillo.

Historical Context
Los Castillo was founded at Taxco in 1939 by Antonio Castillo and his brothers, who had trained in William Spratling’s workshop before setting up on their own, and the firm became the largest and most inventive of the second-generation Taxco workshops. Alongside its sterling silver the firm produced an extensive line of silver plate on base metal, marked plateado, in which the sculptural holloware for which it is best known — bird-handled pitchers, stone-inlaid vessels and figural table pieces — was made for a wider market. The alphanumeric registration system that produced the TA-01 mark was introduced in Mexico in 1979 to replace the older eagle stamps, which dates this example to about 1980 rather than to the workshop’s earlier decades.

(Ref: NY11242-ckix) See less