1976 · 2026 — 50 years

The Artist and the Engineer

It started with a question.

Fifty years ago, an artist and an engineer answered it together. This is the story of that answer, and of the long road sculpture travelled before it reached it.

Ernesto and Sima Abraham, founders of D'Argenta

From clay to precious metal

How sculpture came home

Sculpture was born for gods and kings. It took centuries to reach the home.

7th century · Palenque
Pakal, king of Palenque, was buried in a jade mosaic mask: a man's face turned into precious matter.
13th–16th centuries · Oaxaca
Mixtec goldsmiths worked gold with a finesse that still astonishes. The treasure of Tomb 7 at Monte Albán, found in 1932, proves it.
Rome
In the Roman villa, marble sculpture left the temple and entered the house: busts, figures and fountains to live among.
1543 · France
Benvenuto Cellini delivers to Francis I a salt cellar of gold and enamel: a sculpture made for the table.
New Spain
For three centuries, Mexican silver shaped churches and homes: candlesticks, trays, figures.
1925 · Paris
The Exposition des Arts Décoratifs crowns sculpture for the living room, not the museum.
1931 · Taxco
William Spratling opens his workshop and Mexican silver is reborn as design.
1976 · Mexico City
D'Argenta joins the two stories: sculpture made by hand and precious metal, in pieces for the home.

D'Argenta Pakal head, finished in silver — D'Argenta's first piece was a Pakal. The collection keeps it today, finished in silver.

The origin

One afternoon in the workshop

In the early 1970s, Ernesto Abraham ran an industrial metal-finishing factory in Mexico City: precision parts for printing presses, pens and machinery.

It was heavy-industry technology. It was used in aerospace manufacturing, in the graphic arts and in precision industrial production. It was not used to make art.

One afternoon his wife, Sima, walked in. She watched the machines finishing metal forms and asked whether the same process could take any shape at all.

Ernesto said yes.

A Mayan king and a sidewalk in Soho

They sculpted a Pakal, the face of the ancient Mayan king of Palenque, and flew to the United States to sell it. Not one of the meetings went anywhere.

On the way back they stopped in Soho, in New York, to see the friend who had first given Ernesto access to the technology. They were standing on the sidewalk with the Pakal when a stranger stopped to ask where it had come from. They said they had made it, and he offered to buy it on the spot. Then a second stranger stopped. Then a third.

They gave the Pakal to their friend and flew home to Mexico City to start D'Argenta. The year was 1976.

Today

How we carry it further

Sima's question is still open. Every generation of sculptors gives it a new answer.

Every piece begins carved by hand. The collection now brings together the work of more than twenty artists: Mexican and international sculptors, and licensed works by Salvador Dalí and Frida Kahlo.

It is then finished in fine silver, 24-karat gold or copper through a precise electrochemical process: layer by layer, micron by micron. The metal follows the surface exactly as the sculptor's hand left it, and a single piece can combine all three.

Every work is recorded by serial number in the workshop's archive, and its authenticity can be confirmed whenever you ask. For anyone looking for something unique, the workshop creates awards, corporate gifts and commissioned sculpture.

Emblematic figures

In the hands of those who make history

Pope John Paul II receives a D'Argenta sculpture at Castel Gandolfo, 1994 — Castel Gandolfo, 27 October 1994. In a private audience with a Mexican delegation, Pope John Paul II received the "trophy of friendship", a D'Argenta sculpture, from Rafaello Stara Fusi, the tour's organiser. Published in TVyNovelas, year XVII, no. 1.

Ernesto Abraham placed a sculpture in the hands of the then Prince Naruhito, today Emperor of Japan, during a state visit to Mexico.

Jerry Jones with the silver Dallas Cowboys helmet.

At a Messe Frankfurt fair in Tokyo, Emperor Akihito visited the D'Argenta stand.

The Diosas de Plata statuette, Mexico's oldest film journalism award, given since 1963 and designed by the sculptor Federico Canessi, has been made in this workshop for decades. The first Spotify Awards Mexico, in 2020, came from here too.

Around the world

Half a century of milestones

1981 · Plovdiv
The Bulgarian Chamber of Commerce and Industry awards the Gold Medal of the International Spring Fair (5–14 May) to a group of D'Argenta silver figures.
1992
A D'Argenta horse makes the cover of Made for Export magazine.
1994
Disney licensee: more than twenty Mickey & Friends figures in silver and gold, sold at Liverpool and Tane.
1994
The silver Dallas Cowboys helmet on the cover of the team's official catalogue.
1995 · Tokyo
D'Argenta exhibits at Internationale Frankfurter Messe Asia, in Harumi (20–22 June).
1996 · Caribbean
D'Argenta leopards arrive in the Little Switzerland boutiques.
1997 · Atlanta
AmericasMart's High Design recognition at the International Gift & Home Furnishings Market (9–18 July).
2001 · Acapulco
D'Argenta's silver leopards preside over the drawing room of Villa Arabesque, in the pages of Quién.
2010
The Silver Majesty eagle on the cover of The Franklin Mint's holiday catalogue.

Gold Medal diploma of the Plovdiv International Fair, 1981, awarded to D'Argenta

AmericasMart Atlanta High Design certificate, July 1997, awarded to D'Argenta

1976 – 2026

50 years

The workshop is still in Mexico City, and D'Argenta pieces now reach more than fifty countries.

“Everything that has life is a masterpiece of beauty.”
Sima Abraham