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A rectangular silver belt buckle carrying small bead-band decorations shows Spratling working the buckle, one of his foundational forms, as a field for restrained surface rhythm rather than figural motif. The buckle and the heavy belt fitting were among the earliest objects the Taller de Las Delicias produced after its 1931 founding (Morrill, Mexican Silver, 1994, p. 156).
Applied beadwork against a plain ground was a recurring device in the First Design Period, the texture doing the work where another maker might have added a stone. The 980 silver Spratling preferred, softer and slower to oxidize than sterling, gave such surfaces their particular warm patina (Morrill, p. 36).
Plain geometric buckles of this kind come to market only occasionally.
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