Azurmalachite and Silver Cuff Bracelet

Five faceted bars of azurmalachite stand in a row across the face of a broad, hinged silver cuff, each stone a different weather of blue and green, so the band reads as a short stretch of mineral landscape held between plain silver borders. The effect is architectural rather than decorative, a flat field of color set in heavy metal, and a clear statement of the sculptural modernism Antonio Pineda built his Taxco workshop on.

The plaques are cut with shallow facets that catch the light unevenly, giving each rectangle its own play of azurite blue against malachite green. Azurmalachite is the natural marriage of those two copper minerals, and Pineda lets the stone's mottled, unrepeatable surface do the work; the silver around it is kept deliberately plain, framing the color above and below in bright unworked bands.

The cuff is worked in 970 silver and carries Pineda's Antonio-Taxco crown mark together with a maestro's CMC stamp and the inventory code ZZ152, the ZZ identifying a bracelet in the numbering system Pineda used through his Taxco years, as recorded by Stromberg. The second hallmark belongs to one of the master silversmiths who executed his designs in the shop, marking their own work alongside his.

Hinged at one side and closed with a safety chain, the cuff sits heavy and substantial on the wrist. It was conceived as one of a matched pair, the two meant to be worn together, a design idea carried in plain metal and banded stone with nothing added that the form does not need.