Scrolled Wire Oval Earrings

Oval silver earrings carrying applied scrolled wirework, this First Design Period pair shows Spratling building ornament from the wire itself rather than from cast or pierced sheet. The scrolls are laid onto the oval ground as a raised, linear decoration.

Applied wirework was a natural product of the early workshop's hand methods. Without rolling mills, the silversmiths hammered and shaped the metal by hand, and fine elements such as scrolls and small balls were formed by working wire directly over the fire (Morrill, Mexican Silver, 1994, p. 36). Scrolled wire applied to an oval is exactly that technique made decorative.

The scroll is a Colonial-flavored motif, consistent with the Spanish-Colonial sources Spratling drew on alongside his Pre-Columbian ones (Morrill, p. 39). On an earring scale it reads as a delicate, hand-drawn flourish.

A pair of wirework oval earrings is a small, characteristic piece of First Period production. Earrings of this kind survive in reasonable numbers and remain an accessible entry point into documented Spratling jewelry.