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Flat curved links chained into a long necklace, this design carried forward into one of the most ambitious episodes of Spratling's career. Though made before 1945, the link is closely related to one of the 200 models he prepared in 1949 for the Alaska project, where, by his own description, the version was rendered in carved mammoth ivory and 18K gold (Morrill, p. 66). The silver necklace here, since reissued, is the Taxco form of that idea.
The Alaska project occupied Spratling in 1948-49, when he trained Alaska natives at his ranch and finished 200 models in precious and native materials (Morrill, pp. 66, 257); a familiar silver link reappearing in that body of work shows how he carried his Taxco vocabulary into a new commission.
The necklace is recorded in Mexican Silver: 20th Century Handwrought Jewelry & Metalwork by Morrill and Berk, in Silver Jewelry Designs, and in Goddard's Spratling Silver: A Field Guide.
A design with this documented link to the Alaska models, and a reissue history, is a notable piece of the Spratling story.
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