Sculptural Fish Skeleton Cuff Bracelet

The fish skeleton, reduced to spine and ribs and wrapped around the wrist, gives this cuff its structure: Antonio Pineda turning a natural form into a piece of articulated silver architecture. It is recorded in Gobi Stromberg's Silver Seduction (p. 150, plate 198), and the existing record notes its .970 silver marks, placing both the design and its material on solid ground.

The form belongs to Pineda's most sculptural vein. He apprenticed under William Spratling at Las Delicias, learning from the master smiths Mondragon and Navarrete (Stromberg, p. 29), and built a taller in which he conceived designs while master smiths executed them in silver (Stromberg, p. 81). A skeletal fish cuff is exactly the kind of demanding open form that collaboration allowed.

The .970 mark signals the higher-purity silver Pineda favored, above ordinary sterling's 92.5 percent (Stromberg, p. 79). The fish skeleton recurs across his cuffs, a motif he returned to in silver alone.

For a collector, a documented fish skeleton cuff is among Pineda's most recognizable sculptural ideas, the natural world rebuilt as wearable structure.