Dragonfly Brooch

The dragonfly is one of Spratling's enduring small-creature subjects, an insect reduced to the clean silhouette and balanced spread of wings that let a single motif carry across brooch, box lid, and other objects. Rendered here entirely in silver, it sits within his repertoire of naturalistic Mexican fauna treated as design rather than illustration.

This all-silver form is the reissued version: the original dragonfly brooch combined silver with tortoise shell, and no all-silver version was made during Spratling's lifetime. A reissue in silver and rosewood also exists, so the material tells you which production you are holding.

The design is recorded in Littleton's The Color of Silver: William Spratling, His Life and Art. Because the all-silver brooch postdates Spratling himself, attribution rests on the later hallmark and on distinguishing it from the period silver-and-tortoiseshell original.