Silson Hummingbird Brooch

A brooch of three hummingbirds, one large with two smaller birds dangling beneath, this is a Silson piece, the American costume-jewelry house that produced designs closely echoing Spratling's Taxco vocabulary. The hummingbird was a motif rooted in the Las Delicias workshop, where Spratling drew on Monte Albán's Tomb 7 finds for bird forms (Morrill, p. 38), and its appearance here in silver plate shows how widely that vocabulary spread into the American market.

Worked in silver plate rather than solid silver, this is a costume interpretation, and it documents the close, sometimes uncomfortable relationship between Taxco originals and their stateside echoes.

With no recorded reference, the brooch is valued as a Silson costume piece in the Spratling idiom, with condition and the integrity of the dangling birds the practical considerations.