Amethyst and Silver Ball-and-Wave Cuff

A single row of small amethyst cabochons runs straight across the broad face of the cuff like a seam of violet light, and the rest of the silver is built to frame that one quiet gesture. Above and below the stones the metal swells into undulating wave-bands, each crest and trough marked by a round polished boss, so the flat purple line is held between two registers of hand-raised relief. Set against oxidized recesses, the bright bosses read as marshaled, not scattered.

This is the "ball-and-wave" vocabulary of the Frederick Davis circle, in which repoussé-raised silver and applied spherical bosses carry the expression while the cabochons supply only color and focus. The amethyst cuffs and bracelets are a documented part of Davis's output of about 1930, set in sterling with quartz-amethyst stones, and recorded as such by Morrill.

Signed FD with MEXICO SILVER, the piece follows the convention under which Davis released work he designed but did not himself fabricate. Working from Sanborn's in Mexico City from the late 1920s, he was among the first to grasp what visitors from the north wanted and to have it made through the capital's best independent hands. One of those was Valentín Vidaurreta, known for large repoussé cuffs and a baroque, dimensional handling of silver in keeping with the raised waves and bosses here.

Given over almost entirely to raised silver, the stones held to one disciplined line, the cuff stands for the early Mexico City workshop tradition Davis set in motion and the designer-and-silversmith model behind the Mexican silver renaissance.