Conquistador Mosaic Necklace

Triangular insets of azur-malachite, set into a chain of links joined by round rings, run the length of this necklace down to a pendant of malachite rectangles scored to read like mosaic: the banded blue-green stone is the through-line, worked into the links and then massed at the drop. The scoring of the pendant into mosaic-like fields is the design's distinctive touch.

The necklace belongs to the Second Design Period, 1949 to 1951, a narrow window that places it among the workshop's transitional postwar work. The inlay of azur-malachite into silver, and the mosaic treatment of the stone, reflect the Taxco school's experimental combination of stone with metal (Stromberg, p. 41).

Azur-malachite necklaces from the brief Second Design Period survive in small numbers and are collected as examples of the workshop's postwar stone-set jewelry.