Tortoise Shell Fish Earrings

Fish cut from tortoise shell, riveted to a silver base, make these earrings a small exercise in mixed materials: the mottled warm shell forms the body of the fish while the silver supplies the structure and the visible rivets. The marine subject and the layering of shell over metal are both characteristic of the workshop.

The design was a long-running favorite. Per the existing record it appeared in every Spratling catalog from the mid-1950s through 1967, with wholesale prices of $4.20 in 1958-59 and $4.40 by 1961 and 1967, and was made not only as earrings but as cuff links and a pin, and not only in tortoise shell but in abalone. Spratling's own drawing of the design survives in the William Spratling Folio of Drawings, and the design has since been reissued in abalone, silver, and a shell-like material.

The earrings are recorded in that Folio of Drawings and in Phyllis M. Goddard's Spratling Silver: A Field Guide. With both a surviving design drawing and a long catalog history, this is among the better-documented of the workshop's later marine designs.