Azur Malachite Arrow Necklace

One of Spratling’s most iconic forms. A chain of rectangular silver links carrying a long pendant set with azur malachite, this necklace shows Spratling working in the rectilinear, almost architectural manner that the existing description likens to a Frank Lloyd Wright design. The banded blue-green stone belongs to the family of semiprecious materials Spratling drew on in his later years, including the malachite he had explored in his "North Star" pieces (Morrill, p. 66).

The design's logic is modular and geometric. The rectangular links establish a steady cadence down the chain, and the pendant resolves that rhythm in a single larger statement. It is the kind of disciplined, repeating structure that distinguishes Spratling's mature jewelry from more ornamental Taxco work.

Spratling also designed this link design as a necklace without the pendant, so the piece exists as one version within a small group built on the same chain. The variation is documented in the Spratling literature, where the necklace is recorded in Cederwall and Riney's Spratling Silver and its Centennial Edition, in Penny Morrill's William Spratling and the Mexican Silver Renaissance: Maestros de Plata, and in Phyllis Goddard's Spratling Silver: A Field Guide.

A securely referenced example with the pendant intact is a substantial object within Spratling's body of work.

Los Angeles County Museum of ArtLos Angeles, CaliforniaOn view

Waterfall Necklace, 1949-1951

Accession M.2016.181.1. Official museum record Photo: Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

Verified against each institution's own collection records. All museum collections