Matchstick Bracelet with Obsidian Tips

The “Matchstick” is a rare and well documented piece of the legacy of Taxco. The bracelet is made of tapered silver bars, each capped at one end with a faceted obsidian point and articulated so the whole closes around the wrist. It is hinged and secured with box clasp and a safety chain, though few have survived intact.

Recorded in Silver Seduction: The Art of Mexican Modernist Antonio Pineda (Stromberg, Fowler Museum, 2008), p. 50, fig. 39, where the same model appears as a "Bracelet from matchstick set with obsidian tips." The book carries it under design number 22514 and notes a matching necklace and earrings illustrated at fig. 141a,b, p. 120.

The construction is the point of the design. Slim silver wedges are set side by side and radiate slightly so the bracelet flexes, the bars widening toward the wrist and narrowing where the dark obsidian tips ride along the upper edge. The black stones, read across the row, give a sharp graphic rhythm against the polished metal, and the matchstick logic that names the set is legible in the repeated, near-identical bars.

The approach is characteristic of the modernist silver Pineda developed in Taxco, where stones are treated as structural accents within a strongly geometric silver framework rather than as central gems in a setting. Here the obsidian, a Mexican volcanic glass, supplies the only color and is integrated into the bar-and-tip module that carries through the matching pieces in the published set.

The interior bears the maker's marks the book records for the model: the Antonio crown, the 970 silver standard, Hecho en México, the eagle assay stamp, and the design number.

Record data: the design number is corrected to 22514. Stromberg, p. 50, fig. 39 gives 22514, not 22534, and records a diameter of 7 cm; both are now entered as structured fields.