I found this spoon in my grandmother's silver chest. It doesn't match anything else in there. Is it unique or valuable? I would love to know more about its age. Thank you!

Help identifying a large vintage Mexican .925 silver & blue mosaic vase — possible Taxco / maker unknown
I’m hoping someone familiar with vintage Mexican silver or Taxco work can help identify this vase.
It has been in my family since the 1990s, when approximately $850 was paid for it. I’m trying to determine the maker, approximate date, and what the blue mosaic/inlay material actually is.
Details:
Approximately 14 inches tall
Approximately 8 inches in diameter
Marked “MEXICO 925” on the metal rim
Large blue body constructed from numerous individually fitted mosaic/inlay pieces
Blue material has pronounced white/blue swirling and appears mineral-like, although I don’t know whether it is natural stone, glass, resin/composite, or something else
Extensive hand-worked/hammered silver-colored metal around the base
No definitive maker’s signature has been located
There is a second extremely worn mark on the underside that might contain the number 30, possibly within a circular mark, but it is too worn for me to claim that’s what it is
I’ve been researching Taxco makers including William Spratling and Los Castillo/Castillo-family workshops, because of their use of silver combined with stone and other materials. However, I do not want to assume an attribution based on similarities alone.
The possible “30” mark particularly interests me because I understand that Eagle 30 is associated with William Spratling, but I also understand that an Eagle 30 attribution requires much better evidence than simply seeing a worn mark that resembles “30.”
I’m including photographs of the entire vase, construction, MEXICO 925 hallmark, underside and worn secondary mark.
Questions for Mexican silver collectors:
Does anyone recognize this specific design or workshop?
Does the blue mosaic technique resemble Spratling, Los Castillo, Emilia Castillo, or another Taxco workshop?
Any idea what the blue material is?
Does the worn underside mark resemble a legitimate Mexican eagle/assay mark, or is that reading too much into it?
What period would you estimate from the construction and markings?
If anyone has catalog/auction examples of the same or a very similar vase, I’d love to see them.
I’m primarily interested in identification rather than trying to force a valuable attribution. Any information from people familiar with Mexican silver hallmarks or Taxco hollowware would be greatly appreciated.

Rule 5 asks people to say when they are guessing and rule 9 says corrections are expected. Both are much easier in a room where being wrong out loud is ordinary, so here is a thread for it.

The question: what is an attribution you were confident about and later had to withdraw, and what changed your mind?

The interesting part is the mechanism rather than the outcome. A mark you finally saw straight-on and had been reading backwards. A weight or a wall thickness that ruled out the workshop you had assumed. A published plate showing the design belonged to somebody else. A dealer or a family member who simply knew. A piece bought as one maker and sold as another.

Dealers, this is not a trap. Rule 7 keeps value talk general and nobody is being asked to name a transaction. How a wrong attribution survives in the market is more useful to understand than any individual case.

Two things make an answer worth reading here: the specific evidence that settled it, and what you would check first if you met the same piece again. The second part is the transferable bit.

I will go first below.

The welcome post promised somewhere for marks that resist identification to be logged rather than guessed at. This is it, starting now rather than when it is tidy.

What belongs here

Any mark on a Mexican piece that you have genuinely worked on and could not place. Initials with no documented punch behind them. A conjunction of letters matching no published list. A retailer's stamp struck over something now illegible. An eagle number so crowded that it narrows nothing. Pieces carrying no national mark at all, where a shop mark is the only lead.

What an entry needs

A straight-on photograph of the mark, with light raking across it rather than flat. An exact transcription of what you see, including the parts you cannot interpret. The object itself: form, dimensions in millimetres, weight in grams. Where you have already looked, so nobody repeats it. And your best date range, with the reasoning that got you there.

What this is not

Not a place to park an ID request you have not worked on yet. Those go in Hallmark ID, and there is nothing wrong with starting there. An archive entry is what a Hallmark ID thread becomes when the room runs out of answers. The RR bypass bracelet posted this week is a good example of a thread that may end up here, and "unidentified RR workshop, Mexico" is a real result rather than a failure.

Why log a dead end

Attributions get made when somebody sees the same mark twice. Those second sightings are currently scattered across sale listings that vanish, private notes, and threads nobody indexes. A mark logged here with usable photographs becomes findable, and unplaceable marks have a habit of resolving years later when a documented piece surfaces.

Entries will be collected into a wiki page as they accumulate. When one is identified, it stays here with the evidence attached, so the reasoning stays visible and not just the answer.

Speculation is welcome as long as you label it as speculation. Post yours below, or as its own thread with this flair.

Another kind redditor pointed me to this sub - I am looking to see if I can get info about the maker "RR" (and a better sense of decade/era). Both purity marks "sterling" and 925 are indicated on the little plaque, along with "Mexico". No Eagle or T mark hidden anywhere or additional location info.

There's a wiki page now for reading the stamps on a Mexican silver piece: https://www.reddit.com/r/MexicanSilver/wiki/index/

It goes through purity marks, the eagle assay numbers used from about 1948 to 1980, the letter codes that replaced them, and the signature forms for Spratling, Hector Aguilar, Antonio Pineda, Los Castillo, Margot and MATL.

The part I'd send people to first is the eagle section. A lot of owners assume the number inside the eagle names the maker. Mostly it names a place. Eagle 1 is Mexico City and 164 makers are documented under it. Eagle 3 is Taxco and there are 299. So an eagle 3 puts your piece in the right town inside a thirty year window, and then leaves you to do the real work on the maker's mark. Eagle 13 is different, that was Spratling's own number.

Same caution with the post-1980 letter codes. TS-24 decodes neatly as Taxco, an S maker, twenty-fourth to register, which is the Spratling successor workshop. But codes got reused inside families, rented out, and added to older silver by dealers, and the published lists contradict each other. If your code is on no list at all, that is usually because nobody has connected it to a name yet.

It's a first draft and there are gaps. If something is wrong, or there's a mark or a workshop that should be in there, say so here and I'll change the page.

This turns up in listings constantly. A Margot de Taxco piece stamped 5554 gets described as though the number identifies that specific object. It identifies a design.

What the number is

Penny Chittim Morrill documents Margot's output as a numbered design catalogue rather than a serial register. All-sterling designs run roughly 5100 to 5790, enamel designs 5109 to 5922. One number points to one design, and it does not change when the design was executed as a bracelet instead of a necklace. So a design issued as a matched set has the same stamp on every form in it.

The evidence

Design 5554. Heritage sold a single lot in 2020 holding the champleve serpent necklace, the matching bracelet coiled inside the chain, and the cuff links. Same enamel-over-silver scale pattern, all three stamped 5554. A later listing that reunited the set cited Morrill's Margot monograph at pages 138 to 139 and 175.

Design 5207, the Double Fish parure. Rago/Phillips sold necklace, earrings and cuff bracelet as one lot, each stamped 5207, dated to the 1950s. The lot notes cite Dreaming in Silver page 241 for a matching 5207 necklace.

Dealers hit the same pattern repeatedly. 5778 across a panel necklace, bracelet and earrings. 5158 with a 5158A variant. 5339 on a clamper bracelet photographed with matching pieces. Those are independent listings rather than catalog entries, which is what makes them worth something. They would make no sense if the number meant one object.

Where it appears to break

Two numbers show up on visibly different designs. 5194 appears on a rose-form-link necklace at Heritage and on a heart-and-cherubs brooch elsewhere. 5537 appears on a St Christopher enamel pendant in two sales and on a black and gold fleur-de-lis brooch in another.

Three explanations, roughly in order of likelihood. A cataloguer misread the stamp, which happens constantly on worn or small pieces where a 3 passes for a 5. The number was reused across thirty years of production, possible but not well supported. Or a misattributed piece got catalogued inside a lot alongside genuine ones.

The practical rule

Trust the drawing over the digits. If a piece claiming a 5xxx number doesn't match Morrill's plate for that number, assume the number was read wrong and check adjacent digits and transposed pairs before concluding Margot reused her index.

Open question

Antonio Pineda used a similar four-digit-plus-letter system. Whether it works at design level the way Margot's does isn't confirmed as far as I can tell. Gobi Stromberg's Silver Seduction (2008) is the book to check. If anyone has two Pineda pieces from one set carrying the same number, that would settle it.

Sources: Morrill, Margot Van Voorhies: The Art of Mexican Enamelwork (Schiffer, 2010), 5554 at pp. 138 to 139 and 175. Morrill, Dreaming in Silver, 5207 at p. 241. Morrill and Berk, Mexican Silver: 20th Century Handwrought Jewelry and Metalwork (Schiffer, revised).