Southwestern Belt Buckle

Wonder what are the inlays? They feel like plastic. The metal is silver over copper.
Thanks

 

Can't help with the type of plastic, but in case you don't know, those are Rocky Mountain bighorn sheep

The zig-zag style of engraving is called wiggle work, wiggle tooled, etc.

 

Plexiglas maybe?

 

They look like plastic from here too.

 

Be easy to work into position and cheap or free.

 

What was the kind of plastic that was so popular circa 1960s-1970s. There was a fad of encasing spiders, scorpions, rattlesnake heads in crystal clear, pour-able plastic that hardened. Can't remember what it was called. Is it possible it came in colors, too?

 

Decoupage?
Mod Podge was one.
~
Yes....there is info like that in my head.

 

https://www.plaidonline.com/mod-podge/brand/home.htm

 

Epoxy? It's not lucite. It's some kind of plastic that was poured into the piece hot, or something like that.

 

Let's see the edge please.

 

Lucite. Thankyou. That's the word I was looking for.

 

I remember that pourable plastic, epoxy resin or acrylic.
Found an article on resin casting http://craftbits.com/project/basic-resin-casting/ and some images of the kind of projects I recall https://www.bing.com/images/search?...ts&qpvt=pourable+resin+for+crafts&FORM=IQFRML
but I think the material in the buckle is a pretty ordinary type of plastic.
The bighorn sheep have a pretty wide range, with subspecies all the way from Alaska to Arizona, and into Mexico, so the buckle could have been made by a craftsperson almost anywhere. I did find images of Navajo buckles with bighorn sheep, but yours is a bit rougher than most, and not a typical SW style.
An image search for bighorn sheep buckle might come up with something, but I didn't find anything exactly like this one.
The closest is from an ebay listing http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/ND15169-VINTAGE-1970s-COLORADO-BIG-HORN-SHEEP-BELT-BUCKLE-/321465466730
and does have a very similar plastic inlay, and a back very similar to Kardinal's. Maker's logo looks like perhaps R&B, handcrafted in Denver Colorado.

 

Here's a larger pic of that back. The ebay listing calls their inlays lacquer, but who knows....looks like the same stuff to me.

 

Similar from pinterest, perhaps the same maker:
https://www.pinterest.com/pin/446349013040691651/

 

Another, on worthpoint. http://www.worthpoint.com/worthopedia/vintage-r-b-hand-crafted-colorado-buffalo-belt
Two more on ebay, but haven't found anything about the company or maker
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Vintage-R-B...381bd27&pid=100011&rk=1&rkt=1&sd=351579868663
and
http://www.ebay.com/itm/351579868663?rmvSB=true

 

One could perhaps speculate that if they are by the same maker, Kardinal's is an older one, using inlaid plastic, and that the ones I've found are later, when the maker had found a lacquer that could be used to get the same effect; and he had by then acquired a fancier back-stamp.
Or perhaps it is a regional style, and several Denver craftspeople are imitating one another's work.