Beaded Cluster Earrings

Earrings massed from a cluster of small balls and beads turn the workshop's most basic unit, the silver sphere, into texture. Each little ball was formed by hand from a melted wire ring worked on asbestos (Morrill, p. 36); gather enough of them and the surface becomes a rich, light-catching cluster.

The earrings date from the first design period, 1931 to 1946, the founding years of Spratling's Las Delicias taller in Taxco. The design's appeal is tactile, a handful of beads arranged for play of light rather than any figural reading.

Clustered-ball jewelry shows how far the workshop could take a single elemental form, and earrings of this kind are a warm, wearable corner of the early output.