Silver and Moonstone Necklace

Moonstone set into sterling gives this necklace a soft, glowing palette, the stones lending light rather than strong color to a structure of modeled silver. The effect is restrained and luminous, characteristic of how Antonio Pineda used moonstone.

The pairing fits his modernist idiom. He was, as Stromberg describes, a key figure in the silver design forged in Taxco between the 1930s and the 1970s, bringing an innovative approach to metalwork into bodily adornment (Stromberg, p. 15). A silver-and-moonstone necklace is that instinct at its most subtle.

It came out of the taller in the customary way, Pineda conceiving the design and master smiths executing it in silver, marking their work beside his crown (Stromberg, p. 81), with his silver typically stamped 970 for a purity above sterling.

Dated around 1953, a Pineda necklace in silver and moonstone shows him choosing a stone for its glow, set against the modeled metal that carries his name.