Cluster of Grapes Earrings

Earrings Spratling himself described as a cluster of grapes translate a natural form into clustered silver, a small piece of representational whimsy within an output more often given to abstraction and geometry. The maker's own name for the design is the surest guide to how he meant it to read.

The cluster would have been built from individually formed silver elements gathered into a bunch, the kind of small-scale assembly his First Period workshop did by hand, drawing and forming silver at the bench (Morrill, p. 36). Figural and naturalistic motifs sit alongside the geometric in his early jewelry.

The cluster form is distinctive enough to recognize.