Most of Mexico’s mid-century modernist silver worked within silver’s own tonal range, letting form and surface texture carry the design rather than colour. Castelan’s enamelled work takes a different route: bright, fired colour applied directly onto the silverwork, bringing genuine colour into a design tradition that mostly didn’t reach for it.<\/p>\n
Enamelling is an unforgiving technique, glass-based colour fused to metal at high heat, prone to cracking or discolouring if the underlying craftsmanship isn’t precise. This brooch passes both tests: clean, vivid colour with no visible cracking.<\/p>\n
Why colour changes the collecting calculus.<\/strong> An enamelled piece is inherently more fragile than a purely silverwork one, which makes surviving examples in genuinely good condition more significant, not less.<\/p>\n What to look for.<\/strong> Enamel should sit flush with the metal, glossy and unbroken, with no visible hairline cracks radiating from the edges, exactly the condition this piece is in.<\/p>\n This piece was part of a small, genuinely personal collection of mid-century and antique jewellery, gathered over years rather than acquired for resale. It has since sold.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Most of Mexico’s mid-century modernist silver worked within silver’s own tonal range, letting form and surface texture carry the design rather than colour. Castelan’s enamelled work takes a different route: bright, fired colour applied directly onto the silverwork, bringing genuine colour into a design tradition that mostly didn’t reach for it. Enamelling is an unforgiving […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":539,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":[],"product_brand":[],"product_cat":[78],"product_tag":[],"class_list":["post-303","product","type-product","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","product_cat-jewellery","first","outofstock","shipping-taxable","purchasable","product-type-simple"],"yoast_head":"\n