Silson Aztec Symbol Brooch

This brooch is one of the designs Spratling licensed to Victor Silson, made not in his own taller but in a silver-plated pot metal for the American mass market. The design draws on Aztec symbols, the same pre-Columbian vocabulary Spratling worked in throughout his career, and the same design was also produced by Spratling himself in 980 silver. The contrast between the two versions, hand-wrought silver versus plated pot metal, is the whole interest of the piece.

The Silson arrangement is documented in the record of Spratling's career: Silson patents were registered in the United States in 1940-41, and by 1941 Silson, Inc. of New York was producing Spratling designs (Morrill, p. 257). The plated pieces let his motifs reach a far wider audience than his Taxco output could.

Spratling's translation of Aztec and Colonial motifs into wearable form was the core of his early design language; he later described those pre-Columbian sources as "a point of departure" for the new work (Morrill, pdf p. 39).

For collectors, the Silson pieces document the commercial reach of Spratling's designs, and this Aztec-derived brooch is a clear example of that licensing chapter.