Gold and Ebony Cuff Links

Worked in gold rather than silver, these cuff links pair flattened ebony cylinders against a flattened gold cylinder at the center, a quiet exercise in balancing dark wood against warm metal. Gold pieces are the exception in Spratling's output, which makes a fully realized pair like this one unusual within his work.

The combining of metal with the warmth and density of a wood like ebony is exactly the device Morrill identifies as central to Spratling's design thinking, an approach he shared with Puiforcat, whose silver was set off by rosewood and other materials at the handles and finials (Morrill, p. 224). Here the same logic plays out at the scale of menswear.

The pair is recorded in Goddard's Spratling Silver field guide. Gold cuff links of his design come to market rarely, and the ebony-and-gold cylinder format is distinctive enough to identify on sight.