Silson Winged Aztec Brooch

A winged Aztec motif rendered as a brooch, this is a Silson piece in silver plate, produced under the licensing arrangement that put Spratling designs into American mass production.

The winged Pre-Columbian form belongs to the seal-derived vocabulary Spratling described as the basis of his early brooches, sawed out of heavy sheet silver (Morrill, p. 39). Silson, Inc. of New York was producing Spratling designs by 1941, following the registration of his patents in 1940-41 (Morrill, p. 257).

In plate rather than sterling, the brooch is part of the licensed line through which Spratling's Taxco motifs reached a costume-jewelry audience in the United States.