Taxco (pronounced ‘Tassco’) is the place to buy silver in Mexico. Several people had recommended I visit it on my way back from Acapulco and I was glad I did. It is situated half way up a steep hill and the very narrow streets entwine themselves like creepers, following the contours, or, alternatively, just go straight up the slope. Some of the streets slope more than thirty degrees.

All of them are very narrow, too small to take two-way traffic so there is a one-way system throughout the town. However, this being Mexico it’s more of a guide line than a rigidgly enforced law.

During my walk around the town I was amazed at the number of silver shops. There are literally hundreds of them. They range in size from very small with only rings and chains on display to quite large shops with rows of different sized tureens, cutlery services and cups all sparking under the spotlights.

I had decided to walk from my hotel by the church to the St Christo – Christ’s statue that over looks the town. From below it didn’t look too far. And being thoroughly sensible I didn’t set off until five pm.

The narrow lanes were very confusing. Sometimes there was a steep staircase that went straight up the side of the hill, which I took every time, but I hadn’t seen any for a while as the town had thinned out and there was only the single track dirt road zigzagging it’s way across the slope.

By a quarter to six I was a lot hotter and although a lot nearer than when I started not as close as I would have liked to have been. I was thinking of returning to my hotel so I wouldn’t have to walk all the way done again in the dark on unlit streets, without a torch, whilst carrying both my cameras, when a beetle car slowed beside me.
The driver smiled and I asked him if I was going the right way to St Christo. He said ‘yes’ and then beckoned me to get in his car. He looked trustworthy so I got in.

I asked him what he did for work.

He was a silversmith.

I asked him where he worked and if I see how he created his silverware.

He said he worked from home and agreed to take me after I’d spent a few minutes at St Christo.

I’m glad I’d taken his offer of a lift. It was a lot further than I thought, especially as the road went above the statue and then descended down to it from behind. I took a few tourist snapshots and returned with Neto to his house.

He led me to a small room down the side of his house. It was about twelve feet square and had no windows at all. The only illumination was the single light bulb hanging from the ceiling. On the only table were ten thin clay tiles. On each tile were ten silver chains lying in parallel. The metal was dull and matt rather than the usual shiny lustre.

Neto explained how the chains were made.

The silver was mined and smelted in the town. There were about five hundred men who worked at the mine but many more silversmiths in Taxco.

He bought rolls of silver wire about three millimetres in diameter. To make the links for the chains he simply wound the wire around a quarter inch drill that was held in a hand drill. A few rotations of the handled spiralled the silver wire around the drill.

The coil was then removed and cut into the basic links. The links were then joined together to create a chain of the required length. Each link was closed using pliers. This was as far as the process had got with the one hundred chains on the table.

The next step was to solder each link shut with a finer silver wire, about one half of a millimetre in diameter. Depending on what type of link the client had requested, as all his products were made to order with the prices and quantities agreed beforehand, Neto could leave the chain as it was for perfectly round links, squeeze each link slightly to create an oval link, put one end of the chain in a vice and twist it using pliers or finally flatted the links using a hammer to create bevelled edges or any combination as required.

As these chains were going to be bracelets so the final production step was to add the clasp at each end.

Once this was done all that remained was to polish each chain to remove the oxidation and create the beautiful lustre of the finished product.

Neto and his two partners took two days to turn the raw wire into one hundred shiny new chains. There were no electrical tools or machines used at all. Everything was done by hand.

I bought a length of twisted wire, a semi finished and final chain as a souvenir of my visit to his house.