Abalone Fish Brooch

An abalone fish brooch sets the iridescent shell into a silver fish form, the play of blue-green and pink across the abalone doing the work that engraving might do elsewhere. Abalone was among the natural materials Spratling drew on, the same range of shell and stone he later worked into the Alaska commission alongside ivory and malachite (Morrill, p. 66). The same fish design was also made in tortoise shell.

The brooch dates from the third design period, 1951 to 1967, and is recorded in Taylor Littleton's The Color of Silver and in Phyllis Goddard's field guide.

That the fish exists in both abalone and tortoise shell makes it a small design family, and the shimmer of the abalone version gives it a distinct appeal among the workshop's marine subjects.