Fist Button

A clenched fist rendered in silver, this button is one of Spratling's small figural fasteners, a complete sculptural gesture compressed to button scale. The fist is a charged, legible form, and modeling it in silver turns a functional fastener into a miniature figure.

The design proved durable and adaptable across the workshop's output. Its wholesale price ran from $1.24 in the 1958-59 catalog to $1.28 in 1967, and the same fist was used as a clasp on a silver and azurite bracelet and later reissued as earrings. That reuse across button, clasp, and earring shows how a single resolved figural form could travel through Spratling production.

The button is recorded in Phyllis Goddard's Spratling Silver: A Field Guide. Figural fist pieces of this kind come to market only occasionally, and matching an example to its catalog appearances helps place it.