Roof-Tile Amethyst and Silver Necklace

Broad fluted links pleat across the front of this collar like a run of overlapping roof tiles, each ridged segment inlaid with a short cylinder of amethyst so that a broken band of purple flickers beneath the bright silver. The links graduate up from a plain round bar-link chain into a deep fan at the throat, giving the piece the weight and rise of architecture worn at the neck.

The effect is sculptural rather than ornamental. Each tile catches light along its flute and drops it into shadow at the seam, and the amethyst reads as a rhythm of color set into structure, not as scattered stones. It is the kind of architectural jewelry Antonio Pineda was building by the 1950s from his shop on the Taxco zócalo, where he pushed the sculptural side of Mexican silver further than most of his contemporaries.

The necklace is worked in 970 silver, the higher standard Pineda favored for pieces of this scale, and struck with his Antonio-Taxco crown mark. It carries the inventory code YY546, the YY prefix designating a necklace in the workshop numbering system Stromberg records for the shop.

Built entirely from one graduated, repeated link, the collar treats a necklace as small architecture, a fan of fluted silver and banded amethyst with nothing added that the form does not need.

Record data: Stromberg, Silver Seduction: The Art of Mexican Modernist Antonio Pineda, p. 119, fig. 139, documents this necklace and supplies the design number YY546, the 970 silver standard, a date of 1953 or later, and a height of 17.5 cm. All four are now entered as structured fields and the volume is listed under References. The length and width previously recorded from the auction catalogue have been retained alongside Stromberg's height, with each measurement attributed.