Earrings of Silver Spheres Surrounded by a Rosewood Hoop

Silver spheres encircled by rosewood hoops give these earrings their compact, two-material design, the bright metal ball set within a ring of warm dark wood. The hoop frames the sphere like a setting, and the contrast of the polished silver against the rosewood is the entire statement.

The pairing of silver with wood reflects Spratling's interest in setting metal against dark organic material, the sensibility that ran through his later wood-and-silver pieces (Morrill, p. 73). Reduced to an earring, the idea becomes a single clean unit repeated as a pair.

With the two materials and the simple form recorded, the earrings are best understood as a tight expression of that wood-and-silver vocabulary, the kind of small piece that comes to market only occasionally.