Silver Disc Ebony Bracelet

The wide domed cuff — dark-grained wood inset with silver discs of varying sizes scattered freely across its face — represents the form Penny Morrill chose to illustrate in *Mexican Silver* (Morrill & Berk, 1994) when tracing the arc of Spratling's design thinking. "The silver dots on wood were a motif Spratling used extensively in this period," she writes, with the circles and dots giving pieces "a sense of playfulness and sophistication." Here the bracelet is that motif in its clearest form: no Pre-Columbian iconography, no narrative overlay, only the frank dialogue between warm wood grain and polished silver rounds.

Morrill describes this phase as a turn toward simplicity of form and an emphasis on surface and line over imagery. The discs here range from large to small, distributed in an apparently casual scatter that reads, on close looking, as deliberate asymmetric balance. The domed profile of the cuff amplifies the material contrast: the wood absorbs light where it curves away while the silver surfaces catch and return it.

The cuff carries Spratling's workshop marks. The bracelet's reduction — decorative content concentrated entirely in the geometry of the circles themselves — is characteristic of the stripped-down formal language Spratling developed as his workshop reached full confidence.

Museum of Fine Arts, BostonBoston, United States

Bracelet, 1940–1950

Accession 2016.544. Official museum record Photo: Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

Verified against each institution's own collection records. All museum collections