Skeletal Fish Necklace

Two fish meet nose to nose at the throat, their heads polished and pivoting on a spine of graduated silver rib-bones that flexes the whole length to the curve of the neck. The skeletal fish — a fish stripped to its bones and then set gleaming — is among the most recognizable conceits in Antonio Pineda's repertoire, mid-century wit carried off with structural seriousness rather than caricature.

Each bone is a discrete cast element threaded along a curved central bar, so the band articulates and sits close as a collar rather than hanging as a chain. The ribs lengthen as they near the center, drawing the eye toward the two confronting heads where the design resolves; the effect is all rhythm and taper, line answering line toward the symmetrical clasp.

The necklace is worked in 970 silver, the high-purity alloy Pineda favored, and carries the full anatomy of marks: the Antonio-Taxco crown, the 970 fineness stamp, the TAXCO MEXICO origin mark, and the government eagle — the cluster Stromberg lays out as the signature of a Pineda piece. At roughly 41 centimeters it sits as a collar, holding the confronting fish at the throat.

Pineda came up through the Taxco school, apprenticing in William Spratling's orbit before opening his own workshop in 1941 and building it into one of the town's major modernist studios. The skeletal fish belongs to that mature output, a motif he returned to across a family of forms — necklace, cuff, brooch, earrings — the articulated spine its most ambitious carrier.