The Taxco National Silver Fair (Spanish: Feria Nacional de la Plata de Taxco) is an annual festival and silverwork competition held in Taxco, Guerrero, Mexico. Its main event is the Concurso Nacional de Platería, a juried competition with four categories: jewelry, orfebrería, sculpture and new trends. The fair grew out of celebrations at William Spratling's Las Delicias workshop during the early years of the Mexican silver renaissance. Taxco and Guerrero authorities formally recognized the event in 1937, and it became a national fair in 1953. That year, Taxco designer Antonio Pineda won the first Galardón Nacional.
History Accounts differ on when the first silver contest was held. Guerrero reference works and a 2020 study place its beginnings in 1931 or 1932, while anthropologist Gobi Stromberg dates Spratling's workshop competition to the mid-1930s. Spratling's annual workshop banquet eventually included a contest for the smiths at Las Delicias. Entrants were supplied with silver and three paid days to work up a design, and a winning design was often put into production. Several of the smiths who took part later opened workshops of their own. In 1937, the municipal government of Taxco and Guerrero state authorities designated 27 June as Día de la Plata ("Silver Day"). The date marked the anniversary of the opening of Las Delicias in 1931, and it is also the day on which Taxco's silversmiths pay tribute to the Cristo de los Plateros. The event expanded into a Silver Week and was later moved to the end of the year. A state decree issued in 1988 fixed it in the last week of November. Editions have in practice run into the first days of December; the 2007 fair opened on 25 November and closed on 2 December. The fair became a national event in 1953. Pineda chaired the organizing committee, and President Adolfo Ruiz Cortines presented the newly created Galardón Nacional. Pineda won for a silver eagle brooch set with jade and pearls. Stromberg identifies the event as Taxco's sixteenth annual Silver Fair and writes that Pineda later won the national competition three more times. Pineda kept a hand in the fair afterward, helping add exhibitions, concerts, ballet and contemporary dance to its program. Sources disagree on when the fair first drew entrants from abroad. Morrill and Berk date the international fair to 1973, with 38 countries taking part and more than 4,500 pieces submitted for judging. Guerrero reference works put the first Feria Mundial de la Plata in 1974 and count 40 countries, as do Velázquez García and Balslev Clausen.
National Silverwork Competition Pineda described putting his best silversmiths on a competition entry, keeping the work out of sight and checking its progress each day. The award carried the name of the designer or workshop proprietor, and the smiths who made the piece went unnamed. For the 2007 competition the jury weighed design, technical execution, aesthetic quality and originality, and entries arrived in three branches: jewelry, orfebrería and sculpture. The prizes that year were the Galardón Nacional with 60,000 pesos, the Galardón DIF Guerrero with 50,000, and the Galardón William Spratling with 40,000. The convocatoria on file with the federal cultural register in 2026 lists four categories — jewelry, orfebrería, sculpture and new trends — with technique and subject left open, and admits Mexican and foreign entrants who can show three years' residence in the country. Seventeen prizes share a purse of 570,000 pesos. The competition is convened by the Guerrero government, the federal Secretariat of Culture through FONART, the Taxco municipal government and the fair's organizing body.
Festival and administration Coverage of the 1999 fair lists music, theater, dance, lectures, exhibitions, film programs and the street processions known as callejoneadas. A Reina de la Plata ("Silver Queen") pageant and the literary Juegos Florales were judged alongside the silverwork contest by 2003. Pineda was once commissioned to make the Silver Queen's crown, which he fashioned in silver and amethyst. The decree directs the organizers to exhibit representative Taxco silverwork, to recognize the highest-quality pieces through the Concurso Nacional de Platería while seeking entries from other Mexican states, and to make room for crafts from across Guerrero and a popular cultural program. It also created the Patronato de la Feria Nacional de la Plata as an interagency and citizen body, whose job is to propose the program to the governor and to encourage public participation. The amendments published on 6 December 2024 rewrote most of that machinery. The state Secretariat of Culture now organizes and coordinates the fair and administers its budget, and its head chairs the Patronato, with the secretariat's administrative delegate as coordinator and four members of the cultural community named for each edition. The Taxco municipal government supplies permits for the use of public space, public services, and police, mobility and civil-protection staff.
See also Taxco school of silver design William Spratling Museum
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