Petate Link Bracelet

Heavy and large, this silver petate-link bracelet takes its name and its pattern from the woven palm mat of Mexican daily life, the links interlacing to echo the over-and-under of the weave. Its catalogue history is unusually legible: it appeared in Spratling's 1942 wholesale catalogue, then not again until the December 1945 catalogue, where it was reassigned a new identification number, and a matching pin and earrings were made in the same design.

The petate motif drew on a vernacular Mexican object rather than a Pre-Columbian one, the kind of everyday source the Taxco workshop translated into modern silver. The sterling bracelet has since been reissued in two sizes, in keeping with the hand-wrought program that has sustained Spratling designs with little change in technique (Morrill, p. 251).

It is recorded in the Morrill and Berk survey, in the Reflections study of Pre-Columbian inspiration in Mexican silver, and in Goddard's field guide. The documented catalogue lineage, the related pin and earrings, and the production by Silson around 1940 to 1944 make it a well-anchored point of reference among the workshop's First Period link bracelets.