Pedro Durán Morales was one of the great names in Spanish silverwork at the turn of the nineteenth to the twentieth century. He founded his workshop in Madrid in 1886 and, from the very beginning, focused on producing high-quality silver pieces for a bourgeois and ecclesiastical clientele. Thanks to his mastery of repoussé, chasing and fine engraving, his firm quickly gained notoriety, creating both utilitarian and decorative objects as well as large-scale religious commissions. Throughout his career, Pedro Durán stood out for incorporating historicist styles into his work, such as Neo-Renaissance, Neo-Baroque and later Art Deco, always maintaining a personal hallmark of technical excellence and ornamental richness.
After the founder’s death in the 1930s, the company became known as Pedro Durán e Hijos, continuing the same tradition of quality and elegance. During this second phase, between the 1940s and 1970s, the workshop remained specialized in religious pieces, including monstrances, ciboria, chalices, reliquaries and other liturgical elements, often made for parishes and religious hospitals. The pieces from this period are usually hallmarked with the distinctive emblem of the house: a two-handled Greek urn inside a hexagon. The company also took part in exhibitions and trade fairs, consolidating its reputation as a synonym of quality and tradition.
In the second half of the twentieth century, Durán diversified its production toward high-end jewellery, contemporary design and art auctions, founding Durán Arte y Subastas in 1969. Today, the brand remains active as Durán Joyeros, though it is no longer involved in the artisanal production of religious silverware that earned its fame. The history of Pedro Durán is, therefore, the story of a firm that knew how to combine tradition, technique and artistic sensibility in each of its creations, leaving a lasting legacy in the world of Spanish silversmithing.