Gilded Silver Cross with Inset Jasper

A gilded silver cross set with jasper, hung on a chain of jasper beads spaced with gilded silver, brings Spratling's design language into religious ornament. The cross draws on the devotional tradition that ran through Taxco silver from the Colonial period, recast in Spratling's restrained modern idiom, with the warm jasper and gilding supplying color against the metal.

The gilding and the matched bead chain show the piece conceived as a coordinated whole rather than a pendant alone. Crosses and devotional pieces were part of the broad range the workshop produced.

The design is unusually well documented, recorded in Mexican Jewelry by Mary L. Davis and Greta Pack, in Morrill's Maestros de Plata, and in Goddard's Spratling Silver: A Field Guide. That breadth of literature makes a surviving example a desirable piece.