Thumbnail Bracelet

Held by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (M.2015.190.13), this sterling bracelet is one of Antonio Pineda's "thumbnail" designs, a compact, gestural exercise in form that entered a public collection on the strength of the design idea rather than any added stone. Its presence at LACMA marks it as part of the museum record of Pineda's work.

That work came out of a Taxco apprenticeship and a major taller. Pineda first trained in William Spratling's Las Delicias under the master smiths Mondragon and Navarrete (Stromberg, p. 29) before establishing his own workshop, where he conceived designs that master smiths executed in silver (Stromberg, p. 81). A pared-down sterling bracelet like this shows the design instinct without ornament.

Dated around 1953, it sits in the period when Pineda was, in Stromberg's framing, a key figure in the innovative silver design forged in Taxco (p. 15). For a collector, a museum-held example of his thumbnail bracelets is a clean statement of his sculptural sense in silver alone.

Los Angeles County Museum of ArtLos Angeles, California

Bracelet, Thumbnail Design, circa 1953

Accession M.2015.190.13. Official museum record Photo: Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

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