Pin of a Vase with Three Amethyst Flowers Was Sometimes

A small silver vase from which three flowers rise, their blossoms set with amethyst, is one of the figural pins that gave early Taxco silver its warmth. The maker is recorded in the literature: this design appears in Spratling Silver by Sandraline Cederwall and Hal Riney. The pin was not fixed to a single palette; the flowers were sometimes cut from chalcedony rather than amethyst, the kind of stone substitution the Spratling workshop made freely as material and taste dictated.

The piece dates from the first design period, the 1930s and 40s, when Spratling's taller in Taxco was translating Mexican vernacular imagery into wearable silver. A flowering vase is domestic and unpretentious, and the amethyst gives it a violet accent against the metal.

Variants in different stones make a pin like this rewarding to track, since two examples of the same model can read quite differently depending on whether amethyst or chalcedony fills the blossoms.