Obsidian V Necklace

The "open arrow" or "V pendant" form reduces jewelry to pure geometric argument: a bar-and-ring silver chain delivers the piece to a cascade of flat chevrons, each inlaid with polished stone and descending in graduated steps toward a broad triangular terminus. The result reads instantly as a spearhead — assembled from its own component geometry rather than represented.

The design reflects the reductive discipline that defined Spratling's practice in the 1950s. Morrill (Mexican Silver, 1994) describes how in this period he pared his objects to their simplest outlines, letting the richness of contrast between silver and opposing material carry the piece. The alternating inlaid and plain faces of each chevron put that principle directly to work: stone and silver are deployed as structural counterweights, not surface decoration, and the open circle rings that anchor the pendant's transitions keep the eye moving downward without interruption.

Spratling executed this design in both obsidian and azurmalachite — the stones reading differently against the same geometry, obsidian's dense opacity lending weight where azurmalachite's mottled greens ease it.