TAXCO
- Struck in
- Taxco de Alarcón, Guerrero, Mexico attributed, not confirmed
- Recorded on
- 1 piece
TAXCO names a town, and by extension a whole tradition of silversmithing.
Taxco de Alarcón is a silver-mining town in Guerrero that became the centre of Mexican silver work from the 1930s onward, largely through William Spratling, an American architect who set up a workshop there and trained a generation of Mexican silversmiths. The workshops that grew out of that — Los Castillo, Antonio Pineda, Margot de Taxco and many smaller ones — produced some of the finest silver of the century.
A TAXCO stamp is therefore a stronger signal than a plain MEXICO one: it places the piece in a specific town with a specific history. It still does not name the maker. Look for what is struck beside it — initials, a workshop name, an eagle assay number — because on Taxco pieces those marks separate serious studio work from the very large tourist trade the town also supported.
Weight and construction tell you a good deal too. Taxco studio work tends to be heavy for its size, well finished on the reverse, and made from thick-gauge silver rather than stamped sheet.
Available now with this mark
If your piece also carries a Mexican assay mark, here is how to date it
Mexico ran two systems and which one a piece carries is itself a date. An eagle's head in profile with a number inside it was compulsory from 1948 and discontinued in 1979, so an eagle puts the piece inside that span. The eagle was drawn in outline until about 1955 and as a solid silhouette after, which narrows it further.
From 1979 the eagle was replaced by a letter-letter-number registry mark that is still in use — TL-67, TF-24. The first letter is the town: T for Taxco, M for Mexico City, G for Guadalajara, C for Cuernavaca. The second is the first letter of the silversmith's surname, and the number is their place in that town's register.
The number does not name the maker on its own. Matching a registration to a person takes the register, and collectors have spent decades doing it one entry at a time. Where we cannot say whose it is, this index says so rather than guessing.
| Struck | Means |
|---|---|
| An eagle mark, any number | 1948–1979 |
| TL-67 | After 1979; Taxco, surname beginning L |
What this entry is based on
- one piece carrying this mark, handled and photographed by this shop Written with the piece in hand. No published hallmark reference covers most of these marks.
Nothing outside this shop has been checked for this mark yet. What is above comes from the pieces themselves and from what was written while they were in hand.
Know something we don't about this mark? Tell us — corrections from collectors are how a reference like this gets better.