About William Spratling
William Spratling (22 September 1900 – 7 August 1967) was an American architect, writer, artist, collector, and silver designer who established the Taller de Las Delicias in Taxco, Guerrero, Mexico, in 1931. Through the workshop, Spratling organized and expanded the production of handwrought silver, trained generations of Mexican silversmiths, and developed international markets for modern Taxco jewelry and decorative arts. His workshop became an important institutional origin of what became known as the Taxco school of silver design, part of the broader twentieth-century Mexican silver renaissance. Silversmiths and designers who trained or worked in Spratling's operation before establishing their own workshops included Antonio Pineda, Héctor Aguilar, Antonio Castillo, Jorge "Chato" Castillo, Salvador Terán, and Reveriano Castillo. Spratling also worked as a writer and illustrator, collaborating with William Faulkner on Sherwood Anderson and Other Famous Creoles (1926) and writing and illustrating Little Mexico (1932). In 1945 he was asked to prepare a plan for expanding Alaska Native craft production for the Indian Arts and Crafts Board, a scheme that was never funded, and he assembled a collection of pre-Columbian art that he largely gave to Mexican public collections. He died in an automobile accident near Taxco in 1967. William Spratling (September 22, 1900 – August 7, 1967) was an American-born silver designer and artist, best known for his influence on 20th century Mexican silver design. Spratling graduated from Auburn High School and the Alabama Polytechnic Institute (currently known as Auburn University), where he majored in architecture.
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