Lot 316

Late 19th to Mid-20th C. Mexican Silvered Metal Cross Pendants with Glass Cabochons

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Lot 316
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Late 19th to Mid-20th C. Mexican Silvered Metal Cross Pendants with Glass Cabochons
Late 19th to Mid-20th C. Mexican Silvered Metal Cross Pendants with Glass Cabochons
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Late 19th to Mid-20th C. Mexican Silvered Metal Cross Pendants with Glass Cabochons

Estimate: $500 - $750

Starting Bid: $250

(0 Bids)
by Artemis Fine Arts
June 25, 2026 9:00 AM MDT
Live Auction
686 S. Taylor Avenue
Suite 108
Louisville, CO, US 80027

Latin America, Mexico, Spanish Colonial revival tradition, ca. 1890–1950 CE. A pair of devotional cross pendants cast in silvered base metal, each carrying the weight of popular Catholic piety on a wearable scale. The larger crucifix presents a flared, leafy silhouette in the manner of the Mexican cruz de Caravaca tradition, its arms terminating in trefoil lobes set with cabochons of warm amber-yellow and cobalt-blue glass. A diminutive corpus of Christ stands in low relief at the intersection, flanked by symbolic ornaments common to Spanish Colonial revival metalwork: stylized columns, foliate sprays, and architectural finials suggesting the framework of a retablo in miniature. The smaller cross, presented on its collector's card, is a simpler equal-armed form with knopped terminals, likely cast from the same regional workshop tradition.

Cross pendants of this kind were produced in great numbers throughout central and northern Mexico from the late nineteenth century onward, worn as protective amulets and rosary terminals and traded along pilgrimage routes. The yellow glass insets here are diagnostic for dating: the cadmium-sulfoselenide colorant system that produces this amber-to-tangerine register only enters the glassmaker's palette around 1890, and the cadmium-selenium-zinc family is characteristically a twentieth-century material. The crosses thus belong to the revivalist current that drew on colonial-era prototypes while employing modern industrial materials, perhaps for the devotional market or the early tourist trade. Size of larger: 3.1" W x 5.2" H (7.9 cm W x 13.2 cm H).

Provenance: ex-private collection, Fairhaven, Massachusetts, USA, collected from 2010 to 2015

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Item # 198740

  • Condition: Good. More petite is missing glass inlays. Larger is intact. Both have weathering with slight bending, pitting, and abrasions, all commensurate with age. Both are wearable as pendants.

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Bid Increments
From: To: Increments:
$0 $299 $25
$300 $999 $50
$1,000 $1,999 $100
$2,000 $4,999 $250
$5,000 $9,999 $500
$10,000 $19,999 $1,000
$20,000 $49,999 $2,500
$50,000 $99,999 $5,000
$100,000 $199,999 $10,000
$200,000 + $20,000