Thumbnail Necklace

The Thumbnail design - which Pineda made as both a necklace and a bracelet - is one of the most recognizable images of Taxco. Held by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and others, it represents Pineda's ability to turn silver into wearable sculpture.

The design grew from a Taxco apprenticeship and a major taller. Pineda first trained in William Spratling's Las Delicias under the master smiths Mondragon and Navarrete (Stromberg, p. 29) before opening his own workshop, where he conceived designs and master smiths executed them in silver (Stromberg, p. 81). A pared-down sterling necklace shows that design instinct unadorned.

Dated around 1953, it falls in the period when Pineda was, in Stromberg's account, a key figure in the innovative silver design coming out of Taxco (p. 15). For a collector, a museum-held thumbnail necklace is a clean expression of his sculptural sense in silver alone.

Los Angeles County Museum of ArtLos Angeles, California

Necklace, Thumbnail Design, circa 1953

Accession M.2013.25. Official museum record Photo: Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

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