Bracelet with Rectangular Onyx Cabochons

This wide hinged bracelet belongs to Antonio Pineda's earlier Taxco years and shows him working with a more elaborate, curvilinear vocabulary than his later reductive style. Rectangular black onyx cabochons alternate with scrolling silver motifs in the Art Nouveau manner, the metal volutes bridging the stone settings and carrying the eye around the band in a continuous, ornamented rhythm.

The design leans into organic line. The silver components turn in elaborate curves and scrolls between the dark onyx rectangles, so that stone and metal answer each other around the circumference of the bracelet. Dating from 1948 to 1953, the piece comes from the period in which Pineda was establishing the Taxco workshop and exploring the design languages, including this Art Nouveau-inflected one, that fed into his later modernist work.

The bracelet is documented in Gobi Stromberg's Silver Seduction: The Art of Mexican Modernist Antonio Pineda (2008), illustrated on page 103 as plate 102. As a wide, ornamented early bracelet, it records a more decorative chapter of the output that made Pineda a central figure in mid-century Mexican silver.