The Pueblo Mágico of Taxco Guerrero is a beautiful small town that sits in the south of Guerrero's Mexican state. Known for its ancient silver mining traditions, cobblestone roads, and colorful VW Beetles buzzing around town.
Taxco, Guerrero is where Silver was extracted and turned into jewelry pieces long before its colonization. The Aztecs had rituals, offerings and practices that included silver bowls, Jewelry, and other items that held deep religious and practical significance.
With Spain's arrival to America, native trades and traditions were intentionally erased. Spain claimed rights and ownership of the mines and began plans to increase the extraction of the elements. This early industrialization process brought a sense of prosperity to the area, influencing its architecture and providing the town with an aqueduct to improve water flow to the mining activities. Allowing the Crown to receive more treasures. The ancient native practices were erased, colonized, and the workers were exploited.
While silver mining and exportation continued in Taxco, long before the appropriation of the Spanish Crown. It wasn't until the late 1920s that its reputation as a source of silverwork was born. In 1929, architect and artist William Spratling moved to Mexico. He became friends with Diego Rivera and used his connections in the United States to organize exhibitions for the famed Mexican muralist in New York City. It was through these connections he then purchased a house and moved to Taxco. He was inspired by pre-Colonization and Aztec artwork to design silver jewelry and other art pieces. He hired local workers to manufacture his designs using Taxco silver. As his reputation grew, he created an apprenticeship program for aspiring silver designers.
For Spratling, creating new art pieces involved direct human involvement and communication between the designer and the silversmith, which is a tradition we still follow in our process.
It took many years for local families to re-appropriate their ancestral traditions. The new techniques brought by colonization created the process still used in Taxco. Nowadays, the beautiful town of Taxco is an international producer of quality Silver and an exporter of Jewelry.
Here, in Taxco, is where Queen de mi Corazón´s pieces are born. We work directly with local suppliers and artisans to create unique, high-quality silver pieces that represent, support, and heighten our culture's riches.
Thank you for shopping at Queen de mi Corazón and supporting Mexican art and culture.
Learn more about visiting Taxco from this great video by Viajefest.
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