Choker Necklace

Often called the "Caviar" pattern, this choker is built from silver links carrying applied balls, each ball finished with a single incised circle on top. The dense, clustered surface is what earned the design its nickname, and it shows Spratling working a purely abstract, tactile vocabulary rather than a figural one.

The design belongs to his First Design Period, 1931 to 1946, and proved versatile enough to spawn variants: the same form was made with inset turquoise replacing the incised circle, and both versions were produced in a longer necklace as well as this choker length. It is recorded in Goddard's Spratling Silver: A Field Guide.

Worked in 980 silver under the joined "WS" mark Spratling adapted from his horse brand (Morrill, p. 39), the all-silver pattern was later reissued, and a related bracelet was reissued combining silver and brass balls. An early original is distinguished from those reissues by mark and period, so verification of the hallmark matters here more than the pattern alone.