Antonio Pineda (b. 1919) is renowned for translating design elements evocative of Mexico's past into often-astounding modernist silver jewelry, sculpture, and tableware. Perhaps more than any of his talented counterparts, he has been able to abstract and refine, producing elegant, spare, and geometric works that evidence a profound respect for the wearer. Pineda was also instrumental in the formation of the Taxco School of silver design. The over two hundred remarkable Pineda objects illustrated in this volume reflect the artist's intense imagination and quest for technical perfection. While focusing on Pineda's art from the 1930s through the 1970s, author Gobi Stromberg also places his career and the development of the Taxco School in context. She considers how a particular set of historical, political, cultural, social, and economic factors facilitated meetings between Mexican and American artists, intellectuals, writers, Hollywood stars, and musicians; spawned the building of roads opening up remote Mexican villages to a growing influx of U.S. tourists and expatriates of every stripe; encouraged a focus upon Mexico's glorious Pre-Columbian heritage and the legacy of its indigenous peoples; and promoted the development of a unique system of production in the workshops of Taxco that made innovation and experimentation paramount. Stromberg and contributing essayist Ana Elena Mallet have in fact managed to untangle and address the multiple strands of influence that together resulted in an unprecedented period in silver design and execution, Taxco's Silver Age.

Mexico's streams give forth cool green jade and rich gold; her shores provide coral and dainty pearls. Her brown hills yield silver and copper and gems whose colors form a dazzling palette for the jeweler. And Mexico has never lacked the artists to mold her abundant jewels into finished pieces of beauty. In this enjoyable volume, Mary L. Davis and Greta Pack introduce us to the splendors of Mexican jewelry. First published nearly four decades ago, Mexican Jewelry has become a classic introduction to the richness and variety of this Mexican folk art.

With some 160 color photographs, this volume portrays the Mexican people, their cultures, and their folk arts, including textiles, ceramics, jewelry, lacquer, masks, and toys. It includes a guide to Mexico's indigenous peoples, a map, a glossary, and a bibliography. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Profiles 180 Mexican folk artists, profiling the works they have created out of clay, vegetable fibers, wood, metal, textiles, and stone which represent many different craft traditions.

This volume accompanies a major international loan exhibition featuring more than three hundred works of art, many rarely or never before seen in the United States. It traces the development of gold working and other luxury arts in the Americas from antiquity until the arrival of Europeans in the early sixteenth century. Presenting spectacular works from recent excavations in Peru, Colombia, Panama, Costa Rica, Guatemala, and Mexico, this exhibition focuses on specific places and times—crucibles of innovation—where artistic exchange, rivalry, and creativity led to the production of some of the greatest works of art known from the ancient Americas. The book and exhibition explore not only artistic practices but also the historical, cultural, social, and political conditions in which luxury arts were produced and circulated, alongside their religious meanings and ritual functions. Golden Kingdoms creates new understandings of ancient American art through a thematic exploration of indigenous ideas of value and luxury. Central to the book is the idea of the exchange of materials and ideas across regions and across time: works of great value would often be transported over long distances, or passed down over generations, in both cases attracting new audiences and inspiring new artists. The idea of exchange is at the intellectual heart of this volume, researched and written by twenty scholars based in the United States and Latin America.

"The Mexican Style Source Boo"k explores the distinctive architecture of Mexico: from haciendas to columns and arches to palapas. Interiors focus on the textures and materials, including wood, metal, leather, paper, fiber, tiles, ceramics, silver, and stonework. Featured patterns include floral, pictorial, religious, symbolic, and stone relief.