Skins of Wax, Skins of Gold: Materializing Process in Ancient Mexican Cast Goldworks

Ancient central Mexican goldworks made by lost-wax casting feature subtle material references to the physical process of their own production. To create works by the lost-wax method, Nahua artists first executed their works in beeswax around a casting core and then encased the wax and melted it, leaving a cavity into which the gold was poured and allowed to harden. Early colonial Nahuatl texts, in particular the illustrated narrative of gold casting in the Florentine Codex, present the wax used in this process not as a waste material or space-holder, but rather as an essential analogue to gold that substituted for and was ultimately transmuted into the more precious material. This identification is underscored by the Nahuatl nomenclature for these materials: teocuitlatl (“sun excrement”) for gold, and xicohcuitlatl (“bee excrement”) for wax. In extant goldworks, the logic of identification between wax and gold is materialized and foregrounded in artists’ use of visual forms that highlight the plastic qualities of wax, including applied coils and fine lines originally traced in the delicate surface of the wax. These approaches to making both capitalized upon the material capacities of wax and produced finished works in gold that highlighted the material’s intimate identity with wax. Close attention to this facet of goldworks’ form thus brings to light their artists’ visual and conceptual engagement with the logic of lost-wax gold casting as understood by ancient Nahua people.