Taxco is a phenomenon. It's an artistic phenomenon.
Indigenous people were mining silver here in Taxco
before the arrival of the Spaniards and in the 16th century,
Hernan Cortes turned over this region to his two sons.
The period right after the revolution is pretty much a quiet time in Taxco
The mines were not as productive and there wasn't a lot of
actual silver making in the town itself.
William Spratling arrived in '31 and everything changed.
William Spratling started his professional life as
an architect in New Orleans. He was inspired to
come to Mexico to do drawings of Colonial buildings
and to write articles and books on this architectural treasure
that was Taxco.
He published a book in '31 but the publisher ran out of money
so he made no money and he was at wits end
about how he was going to live and it was suggested to him that he should
use the silver combined with his incredible abilities as a draftsman
and design jewelry and holloware
so he found a couple of goldsmiths and they made very, very simple designs.
The success was enormous.
By 1938, he had 150 people working for him
and he had expanded beyond silver to include furniture,
tin ware, copper, rugs, and textiles.
He chose as his model and inspiration pre-Columbian art.
This has had enormous influence in the visual arts of Mexico
and in particular Taxco and it's not like they just make
Quetzalcoatl heads, it's they take various motifs
and expand upon them.
Spratling removed himself from the day to day
overseeing of the workshop itself.
He was always there but he turned it over to the maestros.
It was the people in the workshop who had control and ownership
of what was happening to them on a day to day basis.
The focus on the people who actually did the production of the silver
in a way brought life to the concepts of the revolution
These pieces are hand wrought. They're beautifully executed
and they have spectacular designs.
Many of these young designers come with deep roots
in the traditions of Taxco.
Everything that we do in the workshops is inspired in nature.
It's based on these organic, wonderful forms that you can find in the
sea or the jungle and we try to reinterpret that movements
that organic feel to something so stiff as metal.
My mother, Emilia Castillo, rediscovered this technique
of fusing pure silver directly onto the porcelain.
We make the mold. It goes in to be glazed and then it's taken up
to apply the silver. It's very laborious work.
There's about 13 to 15 people involved in the process of this piece
What Spratling got started evolved into something
way beyond anything he could've dreamed of.
Taxco became this incredible destination for many intellectuals and artists.
My grandparents had the first tourist hotel in Taxco.
The hotel Taxqueño register shows Rockefellers signed it
People like George Gerschwin, Leopold Stokowski, and Mae West.
The artist Howard Cook painted a mural in the Hotel Taxqueño.
He said would you mind if I paint something in the hotel and my grandmother said sure
and so he painted a mural on the wall at Taxqueño.
When Howard Cook was given the commission to paint the WPA mural
in the San Antonio, Texas post office, one of the models is my grandmother.
Many of those artists who later participated in the WPA murals
actually painted murals here in Mexico before going back
to paint in the United States.
I think it is impossible to overestimate
the incredible contribution of the three great mural artists
of the 20th century in Mexico,
Diego Rivera, David Alfaro Siqueros, and Jose Clemente Orozco.
The muralists here in Mexico created a syndicato or syndicate
and they only would take workman's wages.
The idea being that they were not some fancy artists,
they actually were workers.
This concept was not lost on the artists who came down here.
George Biddle went back and spoke to Franklin Roosevelt about the idea
and during the Depression, the concept of the WPA was formed to
pay some salary to artists in various communities to paint murals.
These WPA murals depict the people who live and work in that community.
Those murals are now a part of the story of that community.