onyx cross necklace

The cross is not a form that appears often in the documented catalog of Antonio Pineda's work, making this sterling and onyx necklace an uncommon lens on the range of his output. Where his production more typically moved through sculptural abstractions and pre-Columbian-inflected geometries, the cross organizes the same material intelligence — stone weight set against silver — around a form with a longer iconographic history.

Onyx falls within the spectrum of dark natural stones Pineda drew on throughout his practice. Stromberg records that Pineda found inspiration in an important gem, "allowing the design to emerge around it" (Stromberg 2008), and onyx — with its matte density and mass — reads as a deliberate choice, grounding the silver rather than accenting it. That the piece is in sterling rather than the 970-fine silver of his catalogued competition work suggests it belongs to his broader commercial production, the sustained output his taller maintained from the zócalo workshop through the postwar decades.

Pieces of this form fill out a picture of Pineda's practice that his more formally ambitious exhibition work leaves incomplete.