Roof-Tile Amethyst and Silver Bracelet

Broad ribs of silver curl up off the wrist and overlap one another like roof tiles, each fluted segment catching light along its ridge while short cylinders of amethyst sit in the channels between, setting a steady purple beat across the band. The roof-tile cuff is one of the more architectural ideas in Taxco silver — built from weight and overlap rather than applied ornament — and a clear example of the sculptural modernism Antonio Pineda pursued in his Taxco workshop.

The curved tiles articulate into a flexible band that ripples around the wrist, shifting against one another as the cuff moves and throwing the bright metal into a run of light and shadow. The gauge is substantial, and the heft is part of the architecture Pineda intended: the silver reads as constructed rather than draped, the same form repeated until it becomes structure.

It carries Pineda's Antonio-Taxco crown mark, struck HECHO EN MEXICO in the 970 silver standard. A fine safety chain is fitted at the clasp. The amethyst, a violet quartz long worked in Mexico, is set in flush cylinders within the silver, pairing strict modern form with native stone.

Built from one curved tile repeated around the wrist, it is Pineda treating a bracelet as small architecture — overlap, weight, and a measured line of purple, and nothing it doesn't need.

Design number: the number stamped on this bracelet has not been read, and the Catalog field is therefore left empty. Stromberg publishes this model in Silver Seduction: The Art of Mexican Modernist Antonio Pineda, p. 119, fig. 140, with the design number 22666; that number describes the published example and has not been entered here, because it has not been confirmed against this object. The earlier statement that this bracelet carries a "ZZ bracelet code" was unverified and is inconsistent with the numeric code Stromberg records for the pattern, so it has been removed. A photograph of the stamp would settle both points.

Record data: Materials are entered as 970 silver and amethyst, on the authority of the mark described above; the Antonio crown with the 970 standard is recorded in the Marks field and dates the bracelet to 1953 or later. Place of manufacture is Taxco. Construction is recorded under Techniques.