I was mortified to find out that I had been mis-identifying a mark. My research had shown that the conjoined JF mark seen on dozens of Mexican enamel pieces was Jose Federico/Frederico but it turns out that is not correct. It's also often been mistaken for Federico Jimenez and I've seen it listed as by Margot de Taxco because of the note on the 925-1000 site that says it's "derivative of Margot". Bille Hougart, of the Mexican hallmark book fame, gave the following info on another forum:
It seems that somewhere along the line a "Jose Frederico" (note the spelling) was misidentified as being Federico Jimenez, a very talented Mexican collector, designer and silversmith, working in Southern California.
Once misleading or false information gets into literature and the internet and tossed around it is difficult to unravel and spot the truth.
I discussed this with Federico several years ago, calling his attention to similarities between the JF hallmarks. He said it was NOT his work and that he neither designed nor produced "enamel" jewelry. He had never heard of a Jose Frederico.
Jeronimo Fuentes became director of Margot's enamel workshop after Sigi Pineda left that position in the early 1950s. There are several silversmiths in the Fuentes family, and the letter-number registrations TF-08 and TF-32 probably represent the Fuentes family with one or the other "fronting"; in the registration books (including Jeronimo Fuentes and German Fuentes Flores), but I believe, regardless of who in the family worked on a particular piece, the conjoined JF mark represents Jeronimo.
I had a hard time with this mark over the years (frustrating to say the least). Adding to the difficulties sorting this out is that Jeronimo's name has been in the literature spelled with a "G."
In my opinion, the conjoined JF mark belongs to Jeronimo Fuentes…..he may have made ithem or perhaps someone in his family did. Later “enameled” pieces marked, for example, TF-22, TF-31 or 32 can be attributed (in my opinion) to the Fuentes family, including Benito Fuentes and German Fuentes, or even non-family collaborators.
