Beaded Amethyst Silver Bangle Bracelet

Rows of domed silver beads run in tight parallel courses around this hinged bangle, framing a single line of round amethyst cabochons strung like a band of dark fruit between bright metal. The effect is dense and tactile, the whole surface broken into small hemispheres of silver that catch the light against the steady purple line at the center. Worn with a soft patina, it has the weight and ambition that mark the better beaded bangles to leave Fred Davis's counter.

The beadwork is graduated, larger domes flanking the amethyst course and smaller ones stepping toward the scalloped edges, so the band swells gently across its width. Hinged to open, it sits heavy on the wrist. Nothing here is applied ornament; the richness comes entirely from the repeat of the beads and the contrast of stone and silver.

It bears the FD mark and a SILVER MEXICO stamp. Davis did not run a workshop of his own. From the silver counter he built at Sanborn's in Mexico City, he commissioned independent silversmiths to produce designs for the trade he pioneered in the late 1920s, and Morrill records that designers such as Valentín Vidaurreta worked up jewelry of exactly this kind for him. The amethyst, a violet quartz long favored in Mexican silver, is set as plain round cabochons that let the stone's color carry the line.

Built around one idea worked at full density, it is a characteristic Davis bangle: simple silver beadwork and a single seam of amethyst, made rich by sheer accumulation.