Butterfly with Bronze Markings

A silver butterfly with bronze markings, this brooch sets two metals against each other for contrast within a single small form, the warm bronze reading as wing pattern across the cooler silver body. It was produced in four sizes, the kind of graded series the Spratling workshop ran when a design proved popular.

The butterfly held particular significance in Spratling's vocabulary; Morrill records that his earliest "WS" mark appears on the back of a butterfly pectoral (p. 39), the joined-letters brand he adapted from the device he used for his horses. The two-prong clip fastener identifies this as a wearable piece from the first design period at Las Delicias.

It is recorded both in Penny Morrill's Mexican Silver Renaissance: Maestros de Plata and in Goddard's field guide, the two standard references for Spratling attribution.