Disc Necklace

Spratling favored flexible chains and link necklaces, which makes this rigid "disc necklace" genuinely unusual within his body of work: highly polished flat silver discs, each finished with a silver bead at the bottom, are attached individually to a shaped, hollow neck wire so that every disc swings freely. The constant movement throws an ever-changing play of light and shadow across the piece, the design's whole reason for being.

Produced from the mid-1950s until 1967, the necklace survives in relatively few examples, and Spratling designed matching earrings to complement it. Its catalog history is documented: the wholesale price was $14.80 in 1958 to 1959, $16 in 1961, and $20 by 1967, a climb that tracks the workshop's later pricing. It is recorded in Cederwall and Riney's Spratling Silver.

Worked in the 980 silver Spratling preferred over sterling and marked with the joined "WS" (Morrill, p. 39), both the necklace and its earrings have been reissued. That makes a period original, with its early mark and the unusual hollow-wire construction intact, the example a collector wants to confirm.