Matilde poulat biography of christopher cross

If the title of this post puts you in mind of Harry Belafonte, you may be old enough to have learned one of the tougher truths of jewelry buying: By the time you can afford an expensive necklace, you may no longer have the neck for it. Dreamer that I am, I figure people will look at the necklace and maybe not notice the neck. Obviously the workmanship is exceptional.

All those tiny silver spirals were fashioned by hand, the stones hand set, the pyramidal amethysts perfectly matched.

Matilde established her workshop in Mexico City in , having been trained as an artist.

Poulat launched Matl in , and by the 40s there was an enormous demand for her work—enough so that other studios started riffing on her designs. But the price should be lower than for a genuine Matl. Start with the web site Trocadero. After Poulat died in , her designs were produced by her nephew Ricardo Salas, who had worked with her since boyhood.

His pieces are marked Matl Salas or after MS An era of astonishing creativity was over. And what of Matilde herself, whose designs crackle with life? As far as I can tell, there are no existing photographs of her. How can someone so important be so gone, yet still so present? The flow of estate pieces, she says, has slowed to a trickle. It would be a deep, deep shame to lose this legacy.

New York-based writer, editor, and poet.