Bear Belt Buckle with Capped Claws and Nugget Turquoise in Sterling Silver

A heavy sterling silver belt buckle built as a single scene: a cast bear stands at the centre of a stamped field, head up and one paw raised, with two silver-capped claws rising behind its shoulders and a small rosette between them. Nine nugget turquoise stones — blue with dark matrix — sit in sawtooth bezels around the field, four stamped arrowheads fill the corners and two curled feathers flank the bear below. A raised bead border runs around the edge. The reverse carries a belt bar and hook, stamped sunburst work and a soldered plaque with the maker’s monogram. 121.13 grams in all.

Most buckles are a mount with a stone in it. This one is a picture — bear, claws, stones, arrowheads and feathers composed on one plaque and hand-stamped front and back, by a smith who signed it and then decorated the side nobody sees. At over a hundred and twenty grams it has the weight to anchor a belt and the height to read from across a room, and there is not another one; the hands that made it did not make two alike. When did you last see a buckle that was actually about something?