Turquoise Half Ball Bracelet

A bracelet of three tiers of hollow silver half-balls, broken by a row of three turquoise cabochons, hinged with silver pins and closed by a silver pin clasp. The construction is the design: the domed volumes and visible pin hinges are stated openly, the turquoise providing the one note of color against the rhythm of silver. The same design was also produced with amethyst.

The half-ball, or dome, was among the earliest forms to come out of Spratling's workshop, where simple half-dome elements appeared from the first year (Morrill, pdf p. 39). Here that elementary volume is multiplied into a substantial articulated band.

That reliance on repeated structural forms and visible mechanical joinery was characteristic of the Taller de Las Delicias Spratling founded in Taxco in 1931, where heavy-gauge silver was hand-wrought.

Articulated bracelets of this weight and construction are sought by collectors of Spratling's first-period work, the turquoise version standing alongside the amethyst as the two recorded variants.