When she was 6, Emilia Castillo would crawl through the smashed-out window of an abandoned warehouse in the small town of Taxco, Mexico, barefoot and wide-eyed.
While digging in piles of scrap metal on the dingy floor ” and dodging the occasional scorpion ” the young girl discovered her gift. Stuffing her pockets full of treasures and running back to her father’s silversmith workshop in which she delighted playing, Castillo learned to weld the pieces together to form art.
“I just fell in love with working with the tools,” Castillo, 42, said recently from George’s California Modern, after flying into San Diego for a luncheon to celebrate the April 26 grand opening of her flagship store on La Jolla’s Prospect Street. “I was fortunate enough to be able to stay there and play all my life.”
The internationally recognized jeweler and silversmith, who splits her time between a ranch in her native Taxco ” historically known as a silver mining town ” and an equally rural home in Tennessee, admits she still loves getting her hands dirty.
At her husband’s auto body shop just outside of Memphis, in a small room off the main building, Castillo experiments with ideas ” inspired mostly from the wild outdoors ” for her whimsical yet sophisticated lines of jewelry and home décor, featured in 38 Neiman-Marcus stores throughout the U.S.
But it’s not until she is truly in her element at the Mexican ranch that most of her creations come into being. A staff of 300 craftsmen make each piece by hand, fusing liquid silver heated in a kiln to porcelain bowls, plates and glassware in the shapes of tiny playful swirls, fish, stars and dragonflies.
Her jewelry, ranging from bold alligator, zebra and jaguar wrap-around necklaces to elegant swan-linked bracelets, started with basic bangles and chains that Castillo fashioned in high school as gifts for friends, she said. Today, all of her pieces are made with pure sterling silver as well as onyx, malachite and porcelain.
Her namesake store in La Jolla, the only one of its kind in the country, will carry the largest selection from each of her lines. Castillo’s business partner and executive manager for the store, Cynthia Ortiz, said the idea to open a La Jolla-based shop just made sense.
“For me, the most amazing place in San Diego is La Jolla ” it’s like the trademark of San Diego,” said Ortiz, a native of Mexico City who met Castillo when her mother ordered a piece of Castillo’s jewelry. “We are trying to target people who appreciate art. They don’t like trendy; they like something that can be inherited by their grandchildren and that they can have for so many years in their family. Her product is about art, and you really have to appreciate it ” and people here do.”
Through glass doors, the boutique’s showroom floor is viewed by passers-by much like a glimpse into someone’s exquisitely adorned home.
A large decorative serving bowl, the bottom of which is black volcanic stone layered in silver, is home to several onyx and jasper birds with copper beaks that perch along its edges.
Her aluminum and copper chairs, embellished with large turquoise acid-treated leaves, circle around an oversize ceramic-tile table set with Castillo’s signature dinnerware: blue, black, white and green porcelain plates fused with silver.
Her line of silver pitchers, serving spoons and vases are hammered into shape and left unpolished so they can be used every day without fear of dents or scratches, Castillo said.
It’s clear that her goal in creating each piece is to share her love of silver with others.
“It becomes so tempting to translate everything you like into silver,” Castillo said, mentioning the many pieces she was commissioned to create, such as a silver cross for the Vatican under Pope John Paul II, to be placed in the Chapel of the Virgin of Guadalupe. “It just becomes like another language.”
In this case, it’s a language Castillo has spoken fluently since uttering her very first words.
Her father and his three brothers apprenticed under the famed William Spratling, an American writer who moved to Mexico in the 1920s and started a silversmith workshop.
Spratling, whose work soon became popular internationally and was sold at Neiman-Marcus, Saks Fifth Avenue and Bonwit Teller, is known throughout Mexico as the “father of Mexican silver.”
At the luncheon, Castillo spoke proudly of his association with her family, smiling warmly at each face around the table as she shared the story with a community now receiving the gift that Spratling originated years earlier.
Already, that gift has been well received, according to Ortiz. Many people have stumbled into Castillo’s boutique ” which has been unofficially open since January ” because they immediately recognize her unique style, Ortiz said.
The strong cultural ties that Castillo continues to maintain are what allows her work to remain fresh and captivating, according to Ortiz. And although she has plans to open additional boutiques throughout California in the next year, the silversmith will always call Taxco home.
“She has a workshop in Tennessee and now is doing more and more jewelry there,” Ortiz said. “But she still goes home every month for at least two weeks to Taxco to work and provide new designs. It’s a big part of her life.”
Emilia Castillo, 1273 Prospect St., can be contacted by calling (858) 551-9600.