Tortoise Shell Hands Necklace

Twelve linked hands carved in tortoise shell, each inset with a silver disc, make this necklace one of Spratling's most graphic uses of the hand motif. The repeating hand was a recurring image in his jewelry, and stringing it as a chain of identical carved links turns a single sculptural form into rhythm.

The pairing of silver with tortoise shell belongs to the "new gadgets" Spratling developed after the mid-1940s, beautiful combinations of silver with tortoiseshell or wood that marked a simpler approach to form and an emphasis on surface and line (Morrill, p. 73). The clasp here is an earlier-style fastener of the kind used in the early 1940s, placing the piece near the start of that material experiment.

The necklace is recorded in Phyllis M. Goddard's Spratling Silver: A Field Guide, the standard authentication reference. Carved tortoise-shell pieces of this kind survive in small numbers and are seldom seen at auction.