Freeform Starfish Pendant with Ball Accents

The small pin/pendant is organized around a softened, irregular outline that holds its shape without becoming symmetrical. Its perimeter swells and recedes like a five-lobed organic form, while the raised border contains a darkened field set with polished silver bosses of different sizes. At two inches across, with an additional bail of about one half inch, the object compresses a large modernist idea into a compact format: surface, edge, and suspension are treated as one composition rather than as separate functions.

Sigi Pineda’s design depends on the contrast between the oxidized ground and the bright rounded elements that sit above it. The central boss gives the field a point of gravity, but the smaller domes prevent the composition from settling into a fixed center. They are placed with a studied irregularity, close enough to establish rhythm and far enough apart to preserve the open dark surface between them. The raised rim is equally important. It thickens the silhouette, catches light along the outer edge, and turns the dark interior into a shallow, contained space. The bail confirms the work as a pendant, while the archive title records its dual use as a pin/pendant, a format well suited to Pineda’s interest in silver as both body ornament and small sculptural object.

The marks read from the piece, old Sigi marks with Eagle 36 and design number 235, place the object within the period when Pineda’s independent vocabulary was already formed. Hougart records Eagle 36 among the eagle numbers associated with Sigfrido Pineda and documents Sigi marks that combine the Sigi Tasco stamp with an eagle head. Hougart also explains that the eagle system, reintroduced in Mexico about 1948, functioned as a governmental control and assay system for silver of at least sterling quality. Here the mark does not supply an exact year, but it supports the 1950s dating preserved in the object record. Morrill and Berk reproduce a page from Sigi’s circa 1955 catalogue and characterize his jewelry of the period as biomorphic, smooth, simplified, and closely aligned with international organic modernism. The dealer archive’s note that a comparable design style appears in that 1955 catalogue is consistent with that published account.

The object also belongs to a specific workshop history. Morrill and Berk record that Pineda had worked at Margot de Taxco, where he oversaw the enamelers for four years before opening his own shop in the mid-1950s. Stromberg gives a closely related account, noting his earlier experience at Los Castillo, work with Salvador Terán in Puebla, and leadership of Margot’s enameling workshop before opening Plateros in 1952, later renamed Sigi. That background matters here because the pin/pendant has none of Margot’s pictorial enamel brilliance, yet it retains a disciplined understanding of surface as a designed field. Pineda shifts the drama from color to value: blackened recess, bright silver relief, and the quiet modulation of a freeform outline.