Scrollwork Link Bracelet with Turquoise and Amethyst

Turquoise, amethyst, and coral set into silver bring the MATL workshop's full polychrome palette to a single bracelet, the three stones playing against the dense, baroque metalwork. The piece shows the shop's colored-stone idiom at its richest on the wrist.

The carving and setting of colored stones was a defining MATL craft; Ricardo Salas, who trained beside his aunt, was noted for perfecting the cutting of coral, turquoise, and other materials used in the jewelry (Morrill, p. 216). A bracelet carrying all three stones makes that strength the center of the design.

Matilde Poulat introduced the "MATL" mark in 1934 as part of the post-Revolution embrace of a Mexican aesthetic rooted in Pre-Conquest and pueblo sources (Morrill, p. 216). Bracelets with this full palette surface only occasionally within the workshop's output.