Beaded Amethyst Silver Bangle Bracelet

Rows of domed silver beads crowd the wrist above and below a single strand of round amethysts, so the whole bangle reads as banded courses of bright metal and purple stone wrapped tight around the arm. The density of the beadwork gives the piece real heft and a deeply tactile surface, the kind of bold, material-forward statement that came out of the Fred Davis line in Mexico City.

The form is hinged, opening on a concealed clasp, with the interior left plain and lightly scalloped along its edges as a smooth foil to the busy exterior. Each silver bead is a small raised hemisphere, which keeps a substantial form light enough to wear, while the amethysts run as one continuous beaded line down the center.

It carries the FD hallmark and a SILVER MEXICO stamp. Davis ran the silver and crafts counter at Sanborn's, and from the late 1920s was the first to gauge what the North American visitors arriving in Mexico wanted, having his designs made up by independent silversmiths in workshops around the capital. As Morrill records, the jewelry produced for him went out under that FD mark, and substantial amethyst-and-silver pieces of this kind belonged to the line.

Made as one of a matched pair, the bangle was meant to be worn alongside its twin, the two doubling the same rhythm of silver and stone across both wrists. Built almost entirely from the repetition of the bead, it is Davis's instinct for what reads as unmistakably Mexican turned into something direct and wearable.