Necklace of Flat Links with Diagonally Incised Lines

Flat links incised with diagonal lines, each topped and tailed with a pair of silver balls, give this necklace a crisp, repeating geometry. It is recorded in Sandraline Cederwall and Hal Riney's Spratling Silver and its Centennial Edition, two of the standard surveys of the maker's work, and dates to the first design period.

The diagonal incising and the punctuating balls are part of Spratling's vocabulary of worked silver, here disciplined into an even, graphic rhythm across the links. A matching bracelet was made in the same design, an instance of the workshop building a suite around a single link form.

Documented first-period link jewelry of this kind is collected as a clear example of Spratling's geometric design language, and comes to market only occasionally.