Owl Brooch with Obsidian

An owl rendered in heavy silver with eyes of dark obsidian, this brooch belongs to the figural naturalism that ran alongside Spratling's pre-Columbian work in the first design period. What makes the example notable is the material itself: the design is more commonly encountered with amethyst eyes under slightly later hallmarks, and the obsidian here suggests an early, short-lived variant before the substitution. Obsidian was one of the native Mexican materials Spratling drew on as his workshop took shape, prized for the way its glassy black surface catches and holds light.

That use of local stone was central to what Spratling was doing in Taxco. Having founded the silver revival there in 1931, he built the Taller de Las Delicias around Mexican materials and motifs, translating an indigenous visual vocabulary into objects for a largely American clientele (Stromberg, p. 27). A creature like the owl, cut and modeled in silver and set with obsidian, sits squarely in that program.

The shift from obsidian to amethyst over the design's life is the kind of detail that lets a piece be placed in time, and the obsidian version is the scarcer of the two.

Pins from this period come to market only occasionally in their earliest material state, which gives this example its particular interest to collectors of Spratling's first decade.