Riveted Tortoise Shell Bracelet

A silver cuff carrying a swirl of tortoise shell studded with eleven silver rivets is a Third Period bracelet whose design is the interplay of materials: the warm, mottled shell sweeping across the band, pinned and punctuated by silver. Spratling's own catalog described it as "slip on twisted light forged polished tortoise," language that fixes both its construction and its finish.

The same motif appears in a ring, so the cuff belongs to a small suite, and Spratling's own drawing of the bracelet survives in the William Spratling Folio of Drawings, a direct link from the designer's hand to the object.

The bracelet is recorded in Cederwall and Riney's Spratling Silver, in Davis and Pack's Mexican Jewelry, in the Folio of Drawings, and in Goddard's field guide. It wholesaled at $10.08 in 1958-59 and $10.40 in 1961 and 1967; a similar design has been reissued, so an original with its tortoise shell and rivets intact and an early mark is the period piece.