ABSTRACT
When Warner Brothers made a movie in 1948 about the life of William Spratling, they called it "The Man from New Orleans", and Spratling liked that label. Spratling supplemented his Tulane salary by selling articles and drawings to a variety of architectural and travel magazines, and he illustrated several books by his writer friends: Picturesque New Orleans, with Lyle Saxon. In 1929, abruptly and rather mysteriously, he quit his job at Tulane and moved to Taxco, a picturesque village in the mountains south of Mexico City that had once been a thriving center of silver-mining. He hoped to make a living writing about Mexico for American audiences, but that proved more difficult than he had foreseen. Many of the young men who trained with Spratling started their own workshops, and they were joined by American and European designers attracted by the town's cheap living, cheap labor, and good company.
