Cantera Lapel Pin in Sterling Silver & Fire Opal

The Cantera Lapel Pin is a .925 sterling silver stick pin set with a Mexican cantera fire opal from Jalisco, hollow-formed in cartoneado and hand-raised in repoussé in our workshop in Taxco, Guerrero, Mexico.

Cantera opal is fire opal left inside its host rock. Instead of cutting the gem free, the lapidary keeps the rhyolite matrix around it — so what you get is the opal's fire held in the stone it grew in, with the reds and ochres of the rock as its setting. Every one is a different landscape. Mexican fire opal is found in Querétaro and Jalisco; the stones we use come from Jalisco.

The frame is made with two techniques. It is hollow-formed in cartoneado — sheets of .925 sterling are die-stamped and soldered by hand into a hollow form, so the pin has volume without weight. Then it is worked in repoussé, one of the oldest metalworking techniques there is and one almost nobody in Taxco still practices: the silver is hammered by hand from the reverse to raise the design, so the relief comes out of the metal itself rather than being stamped on.

It's the same stone as our Cantera Medallion, made small enough for a lapel. Wear it on a lapel, a jacket, a coat or the band of a hat.

Details

• Material: .925 sterling silver, hand-polished
• Construction: hollow-formed in cartoneado and hand-raised in repoussé
• Stone: natural Mexican cantera fire opal from Jalisco, in rhyolite matrix, cut by our lapidary in Mexico
• Closure: long stick pin with a sterling silver clutch
• Every stone is different: color and pattern vary from pin to pin
• Made in: our workshop in Taxco, Guerrero, Mexico
• Made to order: 4–6 weeks from order to delivery
• Shipping: worldwide. US orders ship from Houston, Texas; orders in Mexico ship from our workshop in Taxco

Care

Silver is a living material and will develop a patina over time. Polish it with a silver cloth to bring back the shine, or leave it darker — we like it both ways. Opal is soft and holds water: keep it away from perfume, household cleaners and chlorine, never soak it, and store it dry.

Questions

What is cantera opal? Mexican fire opal that is cut with its host rock still attached, rather than freed from it. The opal's fire sits inside a matrix of rhyolite, so the stone reads as a landscape rather than a gem. In Mexico it is found in Querétaro and Jalisco; ours comes from Jalisco. It's one of the few gemstones the world associates specifically with Mexico.

What are cartoneado and repoussé? Cartoneado is a Taxco technique in which sheets of sterling silver are die-stamped and soldered by hand into a hollow form, which gives volume without weight. Repoussé raises the design by hammering the silver from the reverse side. It's slow, it's done entirely by hand, and very few silversmiths in Taxco still work this way.

Will my pin look exactly like the photo? No, and that's the point. Every cantera stone has its own pattern of fire and rock, so yours will be its own.

Does it match the Cantera Medallion? It uses the same stone and the same repoussé work, so the two read as a pair — the medallion for a chain, the pin for a lapel.