“I’ve been doing this work for 50 years now, and every day I like it more,” Arturo Salgado said as he deftly curled pieces of silver wire into spiral designs.
Maestro Arturo, as he is often called, started making filigree as a teenager and now, at 67, works alongside his wife, Martha Téllez, their three daughters and sometimes a grandchild or two. Using needle-nose pliers and other simple tools, they make intricately detailed jewelry by hand.
The workshop for the family business, Antiguas Maravillas (in English, Ancient Wonders), is set up to show visitors the artisanal process of turning raw silver grain into earrings and necklaces for sale.
A few miles from downtown Oaxaca, the capital of the southern Mexican state of the same name, the workshop occupies the front of the couple’s home. Each of the Salgado Téllez daughters — Donají, 45; Rubí, 41; and Yesenia, 38 — has her own house on the property, and they all share a shady patio.
Being able to live “together, but not on top of each other” keeps the family united and makes it easier to share ideas and make joint decisions, Donají said.
The work that is their livelihood requires patience, concentration and a sense of calm, the family patriarch said, adding that it is important to enjoy it because it is so time consuming. An elaborate pair of earrings, for example, may have more than 100 components and take three or more days to make, he said, although the artisans often put together several pieces at once.
Yesenia has, at times, found the painstaking work to be a refuge, helping her through a divorce: “Everything around you can be happening, but you focus on the work, on the piece, and you’re able to forget the rest.”
In this part of Oaxaca, called Valles Centrales, silversmiths tend to use a filigree technique called cartoneado, which uses single strands of flattened wire rather than two fine-gauge strands twisted together. “The steps for fabricating it are a little different from the filigree they make in other places,” Rubí said.
In the workshop, the family demonstrated the process. First, they make their own wire by pouring melted silver into a mold to create a pencil-size rod. Then, using a hand-crank rolling mill and a drawplate with smaller and smaller holes, they gradually press and stretch the rod into wire that is fine enough to be shaped easily.
Next, the wire is given texture by passing it through a small steel plate with threaded holes; the texture gives the wire a serrated edge as it is flattened. Short pieces of the wire then are bent into various curlicue patterns, assembled like a jigsaw puzzle and pressed into soft charcoal to hold everything in place for soldering.
Once the components are joined, the piece is polished, an oxidized finish is applied to give it an antique look and adornments, such as rows of cultured freshwater pearls or beads, purchased from suppliers, are attached.
In addition to filigree, the family also does lost-wax casting, which involves creating a sturdy mold around a wax model; in the presence of high heat, the wax melts away, leaving a cavity for the addition of molten metal.
The artisans often combine the techniques in one piece, sometimes adding touches of filigree to a cast flower or bird. The equipment they use is basic and sometimes even homemade, such as a manual centrifugal casting machine that Maestro Arturo fashioned from parts of a clothes washer.
At the family workshop, prices range from 500 Mexican pesos ($27) for a pair of small heart-shape earrings to 17,400 pesos (about $930) for a set that includes a pearl necklace with a large filigree pendant and matching earrings.
The family also sells at arts and crafts fairs around Mexico and abroad, including the International Folk Art Market scheduled later this week in Santa Fe, N.M. — although their prices typically are higher at such events to defray expenses.
Art of the Ancestors
Jewelry making in Oaxaca’s Valles Centrales region goes as far back as his Zapotec and Mixtec ancestors, Maestro Arturo said.
The city of Monte Albán — a UNESCO World Heritage site more than 2,000 years old that is within easy hiking distance of the Salgado Téllez home — was the Zapotec capital until the ninth century. It was later occupied by the Mixtecs, who were doing advanced metalwork long before the Spanish arrived in the early 1500s in what is now Mexico.
In fact, a tomb at Monte Albán yielded pre-Columbian Mixtec gold pieces that have the lacy look of filigree. (The style is often referred to as “false filigree” because casting techniques were used then, rather than bent wire.)
Although the filigree technique is thousands of years old, the ability to make and bend thin wire does not seem to have existed in Latin America before the arrival of the Spanish, according to Marta Turok, a Mexican anthropologist who has written extensively about folk art and culture. (She said she did not know the Salgado Téllez family.)
Ms. Turok said traditional filigree work has been dying out in some parts of Mexico because it is so labor intensive and the materials are so expensive. “It’s an act of love,” she added.
Antiguas Maravillas is not the only filigree business in Oaxaca, but it is among the most well known. A 2016 book on Oaxacan metalwork profiled the family workshop as one of eight still using traditional fabrication methods. And earlier this year, at the Museo Nacional de Culturas Populares in Mexico City, the Salgado Téllez and the Pacheco Pineda families were the subjects of an exhibition called “Labradores de Historias: Orfebrería Tradicional Oaxaqueña,” or “Crafters of Stories: Traditional Oaxacan Metalsmithing.”
Linda Hanna, an American who lives in Oaxaca and has been giving folk art tours there for more than 20 years, said she often takes groups to Antiguas Maravillas because visitors love learning about the process.
“People have seen the work in stores, maybe, but they really don’t have any idea that an artist has to make the wire before they make the piece,” she said. Another part of the appeal, she added, is that the work is done by three generations, including the women in the family.
Multiple Generations
Maestro Arturo said he always wanted his wife and daughters to be involved in his work and noted that they all do everything, from melting the silver to putting the finishing touches on a piece. “This occupation was once for men only,” he said, adding that he still knew people who felt that way — an attitude he blamed on machismo.
His own interest in filigree began around age 15, after he had moved to the Oaxacan state capital from a village several hours away. An older brother, an apprentice at a local metalsmithing workshop, began teaching him. After his brother died a couple of years later, the young Arturo continued his training with others and took some courses.
In those days, Oaxacan filigree jewelry was primarily made of gold, and for many years, he produced gold pieces for local jewelry stores.
Martha Téllez, 63, said she initially helped her husband with simple tasks. Over time, she found that she liked the work “and then he couldn’t get me out of there,” she said with a laugh. And one by one, as each daughter finished her schooling, she joined the family enterprise.
The family has had setbacks, including the loss of a home during a national economic crisis in the 1990s and a burglary a few years later. But Donají said her parents’ hard work and perseverance got them all back on their feet.
All five of the couple’s grandchildren know their way around the workshop — from Samuel Chávez Salgado, 5, who is one of Yesenia’s three sons, to Frida Cruz Salgado, 22, Rubí’s daughter, who won her first crafts competition at age 8 and now is studying to be a lawyer.
Yesenia said that when she thinks of her sons’ futures, she sometimes feels it would be easier for them to be doctors or engineers or office workers. But a part of her hopes they will want to continue the family tradition.
In February, her son Mateo, 7, was the youngest honoree in a competition sponsored by Friends of Oaxacan Folk Art, a nonprofit organization with members in the United States and Mexico, and the Museo Estatal de Arte Popular Oaxaca, a local museum. He designed a round pendant with sections of filigree shaped like the polygons on a soccer ball.
The museum displayed his piece and a quotation: “When I grow up, I want to be a jeweler like my grandfather and a soccer player like Ronaldo.”
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