Swirled "U" Shape Earrings

A swirled "U" shape gives these First Design Period silver earrings their entire form, a single curving gesture repeated as a pair. There is no stone and no applied ornament, just the modeled sweep of the silver itself.

The reliance on a clean abstract curve shows the modern, sculptural side of Spratling's early work, where form alone carried the design. The earrings were hand-wrought in the workshop's early manner, the silver hammered and shaped by hand without rolling mills (Morrill, Mexican Silver, 1994, p. 36), so the smoothness of the swirl is the product of hand finishing.

Keeping a design to one resolved shape, scaled to the ear, was typical of how Spratling treated small jewelry: a strong silhouette rather than busy detail.

As a plain sculptural pair, these earrings are a modest but recognizable example of First Period production. Such simple curved designs survive in usable numbers and remain collectible as clear instances of Spratling's economy of form.