Sun and Moon Buckle

A sun and a moon, worked in silver and bronze, share the face of this belt buckle: the two celestial bodies, rendered in two metals, set light against dark in both subject and material. The pairing draws on imagery deep in Mexican and Pre-Columbian cosmology, the sun and moon among the oldest of Mesoamerican symbols.

The buckle belongs to the First Design Period, 1931 to 1946. The deliberate use of bronze alongside silver belongs to the Taxco school's appetite for combining metals for color and meaning (Stromberg, p. 41), and here the two tones reinforce the sun-and-moon opposition.

Figural belt buckles in mixed metals are an uncommon part of the workshop's output and come to market only occasionally.