Plaque Pendant with Turquoise and Coral

This silver pendant, set with turquoise, coral, and hardstone, draws several stones into a single design in the color-forward MATL manner. The taste for inlaid color over plain metal grew from Matilde Poulat's post-Revolution embrace of a native Mexican aesthetic drawn from Pre-Conquest and pueblo sources (Morrill, p. 216).

The range of stones reflects the taller's bench skills, where Ricardo Salas was trained to carve coral, turquoise, and other hardstones for the firm (Morrill, p. 216).

Pendants combining this many stones show the MATL idiom at its most richly inlaid.