Amethyst and Silver Nautilus Brooch

A silver shell curls in on itself in a tight chambered spiral, its surface chased with deep parallel grooves that radiate from the coil and taper to a drawn-out point at one end. At the center sits a single round amethyst cabochon, ringed by a twist of silver rope that frames the stone like the eye of the spiral. The volume is fully modeled, ribbing and swell carried around the whorl with a naturalist's attention to how a real nautilus is built.

It is the kind of natural-form jewelry Fred Davis made popular in Mexico City, where a shell or a flower could be rendered in silver with enough conviction to feel collected rather than designed. The amethyst, set flush in its roped bezel, both anchors the composition and stands in for the dense knot at the heart of the shell, the one note of color against the bright metal.

The brooch carries Davis's FD mark with the SILVER MEXICO stamp. Davis did not run a workshop of his own; from the late 1920s he commissioned independent silversmiths and sold their work at Sanborn's, shaping pieces to the tastes of the North Americans who passed through Mexico City. Morrill records how closely he shared in the design process, drawing on Pre-Columbian sources and contemporary Mexican craft to produce silver that read as unmistakably Mexican.

Worked entirely around one observed natural form, the shell is a clear example of the naturalism that defined the Davis line, ornament drawn from the thing itself rather than applied to it.