Stepped Geometric Necklace, Model No. 79

Built from a row of articulated sterling panels, this collar steps and terraces like a piece of architecture. Each plate is cut into the rising and falling profile of a stepped fret and worked with diamonds, chevrons, and parallel lines struck by hand, so the ornament reads as light and shadow across plain silver rather than as applied decoration.

The design reflects how Ana Núñez Brilanti worked at the Victoria taller, drawing on Mexican history and the natural world and giving a personal interpretation to elements from pre-Columbian clay stamps, manuscripts, and architectural detail (Morrill, Mexican Silver, 1994). The stepped and terraced forms here answer directly to that architectural source, and the incised lines and punched patterns are the piercing-and-stamping technique that characterized Victoria's silver jewelry.

The Victoria workshop was best known for silver on copper, but Brilanti also worked extensively in pure silver, the line she carried on after giving up mixed metals. The reverse is struck with the circular VICTORIA TAXCO mark, the model number 79, and STERLING.

Record data: the title is standardised as Stepped Geometric Necklace, Model No. 79, and the same wording is now used for the citation title, which previously read "Victoria De Taxco Sterling Silver Necklace, Model 79" and so differed from the displayed title. Model number 79 is entered as a structured field. Morrill and Berk, Mexican Silver: 20th Century Handwrought Jewelry & Metalwork (1994), cited in the note for Ana Núñez Brilanti's use of pre-Columbian stamps, manuscripts and architectural detail, is added to References.

Still outstanding: dimensions — interior length, panel width and the number of panels — have not been measured. The mark recorded for this object gives the maker and the model number but no standard stamp or date-bearing element has been photographed, so the Date field is entered as unknown rather than as a workshop range.