Carved Amethyst Necklace

Carved-amethyst jewelry is the rarest and most painterly current in Héctor Aguilar's output, and this necklace is among its most resolved expressions: seven graduated plaques of carved amethyst, each cut into deep parallel channels that fan outward like a stylized feather or shell, suspended as a fringe from a handmade silver link chain. Where most Taxco silver of the period treats stone as an accent set into metal, here the amethyst itself is the carved subject, and the silver is reduced to the spare bezels that crown each plaque and the articulated links that carry them. The result sits at the intersection of pre-Columbian lapidary tradition and mid-century modern restraint, and it places the piece within the small, prized family of Aguilar amethyst jewelry.

The carved-amethyst line traces back to the late 1930s, when the workshop began producing brooches, cuffs, bracelets, and necklaces built around carved amethyst, work closely associated with the designer Valentín Vidaurreta, whose amethyst designs moved between his own bench, Fred Davis, and Aguilar's taller (Penny C. Morrill, Hector Aguilar: Taller Borda monograph, 1996, pp. 84, 88). That lineage of carving the stone rather than merely setting it is exactly what this necklace extends, trading the earlier floral and hand motifs for a cleaner, fluted abstraction.

The marks read this object precisely. The "HA MADE IN MEXICO STERLING" stamp is the form Aguilar used roughly between 1943 and 1948, the years when the Taller Borda was at its commercial peak, having secured its contract with the American firm Coro in 1943 and on the way to opening its retail outlet in 1948. This is fully matured workshop production: the link chain is assembled by hand, the amethyst plaques are graduated and matched across the fringe, and the whole reads as a designed suite rather than an accumulation of parts. Substantial in weight and broad across the collarbone, it was made to be worn as a statement.

A complete carved-plaque necklace, rather than a single brooch or pair of earrings, is the scarcer and more ambitious form, and that is what makes this example worth attention.