Silson Bird Link Necklace

This necklace combines stylized birds with heavy scrolled links, and its Silson mark places it within a specific chapter of Spratling's commercial history. In 1941 Silson, Inc. of New York began producing Spratling designs under United States patents (Morrill, p. 257), and this silver-plate piece comes from that licensed American manufacture rather than the Taxco workshop.

The pairing of figural birds with weighty scrolled links is characteristic of the bolder costume jewelry of that arrangement, designs translated for an American market and produced in plate rather than sterling. The birds give the piece its subject while the scrolls supply its structure.

The Silson episode is a documented part of how Spratling's designs reached United States buyers in the early 1940s, and pieces bearing the Silson connection are a distinct and historically specific category within his name. As a silver-plate Silson necklace it represents that licensed production, encountered only occasionally.