Silverwork in New Mexico

As the northernmost extension of New Spain, present-day New Mexico's potential for yielding silver and gold was a strong motivating factor in the region's exploration and settlement. However, although colonists searched extensively for mineral deposits, they never found any that they could exploit with the technology of the era. In fact, precious minerals and metals would not be mined on any scale in New Mexico before the introduction of Anglo technology in the middle of the nineteenth century.

In spite of the fact that they expected to find silver in New Mexico and that silversmiths accompanied the Oñate expedition to New Mexico, some settlers brought household items of silver with them. Estate inventories and wills of New Mexican citizens in the eighteenth century include listings of silver household utensils. Among the upper and middle classes the utilitarian use of silver continued as late as the second quarter of the nineteenth century, when visitors to New Mexcio from the United States described numerous silver objects used in some New Mexican households. These travelers' comments are corroborated by the silver objects documented and collected from Hispanic families in twentieth-century New Mexico. Some of these bear no marks and may have been made in New Mexico or in northern Mexico.

The actual production of silver objects in New Mexico remains relatively obscure. A silversmith is documented as living in Santa Fe as early as 1639. In New Mexico it appears that some craftsmen functioned as both blacksmiths and silversmiths.

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