Excited by stories of a mountain of silver, the colonizing Spanish in the early 16th century gave the name Rio de la Plata - River of Silver - to the great South American river system that ends at Buenos Aires. In the Andes, along the continent's western rim, their dreams would be fulfilled. So abundant was the supply of the glittering metal that in the 17th century, in Potosi alone - now part of Bolivia - more than 3,000 mine shafts were opened. Visitors of the time were amazed to find chairs, tables and even the most ordinary of household objects, such as sinks and pitchers, made of sterling silver or silverplate.
Though the Indians had already mastered sophisticated silverworking techniques by the time the conquistadors arrived, the new European influence would make itself increasingly felt throughout South America. Silversmiths arriving with the flood of artists and craftsmen from Portugal, Spain and Italy into Buenos Aires when it became the capital of a new Spanish viceroyalty in 1776 began a tradition that has been handed down from father to son and is very much alive today.
Colonial (as well as contemporary) silverwork has long been a passion for Argentines. Now, with prices as much as a tenth of those in New York - partly because decades of economic turmoil have forced Argentina's impoverished middle class to sell off family treasures - the market here is beginning to attract international attention. Christopher Hartop, a silver specialist for Christie's New York, recently visited Buenos Aires and said he found that although there were few exceptional pieces, prices for antique pieces were often much lower than in New York.
Possibly Buenos Aires's most distinguished silversmith is Juan Carlos Pallarols. His workshop (Defensa 1094; telephone 361-7360; no set days or hours), filled with his personal collection of colonial furniture and silver objects, is in his home overlooking Plaza Dorrego in the colonial district of San Telmo - an area that has become the center of the city's antiques trade.
Descended from a line of prestigious Catalan silversmiths, whose works are found in the Vatican and in major Argentine collections, museums and churches, he is training two of his sons to become the seventh generation of Pallarols in the trade. His own creations, he says, are in the hands of King Juan Carlos of Spain and President Francois Mitterrand of France, and are often selected by the Argentine government as official gifts to foreign dignitaries.
Mr. Pallarols's work - exclusively in sterling silver (with a purity level of 925 out of 1,000, or 92.5 percent silver) - reflects both the curvaceous lines of the southern European tradition to which he was born and the imagery of his native South America: delicately chiseled cockatoos from the Amazon, condors from the Andes, thistle flowers from the Argentine countryside or passion flowers from Paraguay and northern Argentina.
Prof. Hector Schenone, art historian and expert in Latin American colonial silver, describes Mr. Pallarols as ''an excellent silversmith who can do anything.'' He says there are other good Argentine silversmiths, all working outside Buenos Aires in provincial towns, but that they are more limited in the styles they can do.
Aside from his colonial pieces, similar to 17th- to early 19th-century European models, many of Mr. Pallarols's more elaborate creations are in a style known as plateria criolla, or creole silverware. Originating in the 19th century - when the growth of commerce in Buenos Aires after the fragmentation of the viceroyalty and subsequent independence from Spain led to a large increase in cattle-raising gauchos on the Pampas - it consists of objects and attire used by these Argentine cowboys, as well as richer versions made for the owners of the estancias, or ranches.
Creole items include whips called fustas or rebenques, knives called facones and belts called rastras. Decorated with silver and sometimes old coins, these wonderful thick leather belts were worn by gauchos with bombachas - wide trousers that narrow toward the bottom and fasten at the ankle.
Even the gaucho's horse was decked in silver. Its chapeado - halter, bridle, reins, stirrups, breastplates and saddle trimmings, called cabezales - was made of leather inlaid with silver, or more luxuriously, with both silver and gold. Some estancia owners went so far as to have chapeados made of solid silver or gold. A symbol of status, the gaucho's glittering apparel was paraded during religious holidays or other festivities. Even today, a special occasion will still find gauchos in full regalia.
At Mr. Pallarols's shop and elsewhere, you will also find the mate (pronounced MAH-tay), a vessel from which a traditional bitter herb tea is drunk. The custom of drinking mate was passed on by the Indians to the conquering Spaniards and today is especially popular in Argentina and Uruguay.
The first mates were simple gourds from the calabash tree. Later a great variety of shapes, sizes, styles and ornamentation evolved. Sometimes they were embellished with silver trimmings, sometimes made entirely of solid silver and even of solid gold. A mate normally comes with a bombilla, a separate straw, often made of silver, with a strainer at the lower end to trap the leaves.