Silver Domed Earrings

These earrings were issued in two forms under a single catalogue number: one with a bronze domed center encircled by a wide rounded silver frame, the other entirely in silver. The shared identifier ties the two versions together as one design realized in two material treatments.

The domed center set within a rounded frame is a sculptural, mid-century form, and the option of a bronze or an all-silver center shows Spratling treating one resolved design as a vehicle for material contrast, the same instinct that runs through his combinations of silver with other materials (Morrill, Mexican Silver, 1994, p. 73). The bronze version sets a warm metal against the silver frame.

Both versions were hand-wrought in the workshop manner (Morrill, p. 36), the domes and frames shaped by hand.

That the two material versions carry the same catalogue number is the kind of documented detail that lets collectors recognize them as one design rather than two, and it makes the pair a clean example of how Spratling varied a single form by material.