Geometric Collar Necklace with Amethyst Drop

This short necklace organizes the neck as a crescent of silver architecture, with a single polished amethyst drop held at the center like a point of gravity. Its length of 14 inches brings the design close to the throat, while the 2 inch central element concentrates the visual weight at the front. The marked record places it securely within Salvador Terán’s independent production: Salvador in script, Sterling, Mexico, Eagle 36, and design number 158. That combination is consistent with the 1950s date supplied in the object record and with Hougart’s documentation of Terán’s script mark, eagle numbers 34 and 36, and the regular use of stamped design or inventory numbers on his pieces.

The necklace is built from repeated openwork units rather than a continuous chain. Along the sides, smooth curved silver elements frame the collar and lead the eye toward a broader frontal section of rectangular openings, stepped projections, and pendant-like lower tabs. The center changes the rhythm. A trapezoidal silver form anchors the composition, from which five curved silver elements descend around the amethyst. These curves do not imitate foliage or feathers directly. They translate organic movement into a controlled modern geometry, a characteristic strength of Terán’s best work. The amethyst’s deep violet transparency softens the metal’s brightness without becoming incidental decoration. It is the only stone, and the surrounding silver gives it enough space to register as color, depth, and suspended weight.

Terán’s handling of layered form is especially important here. Morrill and Berk describe his jewelry as marked by a fascination with overlapping planes, observing that in some works figures seem to hover above a second plane rather than simply sit in relief. This necklace uses a related spatial idea in a more abstract register. The side elements, open rectangles, lower tabs, and central descending curves create successive zones of silver and shadow. The design number 158 falls near several documented Terán works from the mid to later 1950s that Morrill publishes with close mark relationships, including pieces bearing the Salvador script, Sterling, Mexico, Eagle 36, and inventory numbers in the 170s. The necklace therefore belongs to the mature language of a designer who had already moved beyond anonymous work for Los Castillo and was developing his own Mexico City production after 1952.

The biographical context matters because it clarifies the necklace’s position, but it does not exhaust the object. Terán was a first cousin of the Castillo brothers, left Spratling’s Taller de Las Delicias in 1939 to join Los Castillo, and later established his own taller in Mexico City. Hougart records that he helped start India Bonita: Platería-Joyería in 1952, and Morrill and Berk note that his independent workshop included twenty-five silversmiths. Those facts place this necklace within the larger Taxco School network without reducing it to workshop lineage. Its polished amethyst, open silver framework, and layered frontal construction show Terán adapting the resources of Mexican silver design to a compact modern collar. The result is not a small pendant on a chain, but a carefully organized silver structure in which movement, negative space, and color are all part of the design.