Belt Buckle c. 1930s

This belt buckle was crafted by an anonymous artist, and I can only imagine the many hands that touched it, the stories it could tell. It's easy to think of a silversmith as a metal painter, carefully composing the surface of this small rectangle. The turquoise stone in the center acts like a focal point, the center of the painting, drawing the eye into its unique blend of blues and browns. The silversmith likely spent hours carefully planning the design, sketching it out, and then slowly, methodically bringing it to life with various tools. I'm drawn to the radiating dome shapes that occupy each corner, which look like the sun; they create a rhythm, a kind of visual tempo that keeps the eye moving across the buckle's surface. Although this is very different from my own work with paint, I feel the echoes of a similar process of creation: a dialogue between material and maker, where the final form emerges through time and the touch of a hand.