The AM PM Necklace

The AM PM set turns the clock face into a collar of separate silver panels, each one carrying a Roman numeral as part of the necklace’s rhythm rather than as a conventional sign of time. Marked Margot de Taxco, eagle 16, and design number 5201, the necklace measures 15 3/4 inches, with matching earrings measuring 7/8 by 1/2 inch. Around the neck, the numerals do not sit on a circular dial. They advance plaque by plaque, interrupted by polished spherical joins that keep the sequence flexible and give the design its measured pace.

The necklace is organized by contrast: rectilinear numeral plaques, dark recessed fields, polished raised strokes, and round silver connectors. The Roman numerals provide structure as much as decoration. Their verticals, diagonals, and crossbars divide each panel into small architectural compartments, while the darkened grounds sharpen the legibility of the silver lines. The spheres between the plaques perform a practical task, allowing articulation, but they also soften the severe geometry. The result is a necklace that moves like a chain and reads like a frieze. Its subject is time, but its real interest lies in spacing, interval, and repetition.

Within Margot de Taxco’s work, this set belongs to the part of her production that depends on disciplined graphic invention rather than pictorial color. Margot is most often associated with champlevé enamel, which began in her workshop in the mid 1950s, but her silver designs show the same control of line and compartment. Penny Morrill describes Margot’s working method as unusually exacting: she designed the work produced by her company, prepared detailed drawings, and supplied technical instructions for assembly, finishing, and, when applicable, enamel color. That system helps explain the clarity of this necklace. It has the authority of a drawn design translated into wearable construction, not an assemblage of decorative numerals added after the fact.

The eagle 16 mark places the set within the registered marking practices of Margot de Taxco’s postwar workshop, whose marks are documented by Hougart across the years in which the shop helped define Taxco silver for an international clientele. The AM PM set is a useful reminder that the Mexican silver renaissance was not only a history of natural forms, ancient motifs, or enamel color. It also absorbed modern graphic culture, serial structure, and the pleasures of mechanical order. Here, a familiar instrument of daily life becomes a necklace of intervals: twelve hours broken into silver, suspended on the body, and made to move.