Three Ball Brooch

Three silver balls in a row, a larger sphere flanked by two smaller ones, make up a brooch that distills the early Taxco workshop to its essentials. The balls were formed by hand from melted wire rings worked on asbestos until they drew into beads (Morrill, p. 36), and the design simply sets three of them in deliberate proportion.

The piece belongs to the first design period, 1931 to 1946, the founding years of Spratling's Las Delicias taller in Taxco. Its character comes entirely from balance, the central ball given weight by the two that attend it.

A brooch this reduced shows the confidence of the early workshop, which trusted simple geometry to carry a piece without figure or stone.