Amethyst Star Brooch

A six-pointed star set with amethysts at three of its tips and a fourth at the center reworks a simple geometric figure into something faceted and deliberate, the violet stones breaking the symmetry just enough to animate it. The brooch belongs to Spratling's First Design Period, when Mexican amethyst was a favored companion to his silver.

The star form sits within the geometric, motif-driven vocabulary Spratling drew from Aztec and Colonial sources in those years, forms sawed and polished from heavy sheet silver as a point of departure for new work (Morrill, Mexican Silver, 1994, p. 156). The two-prong clasp and the existence of the design in more than one size point to a workshop producing a popular form in volume.

The brooch is recorded in Morrill and Berk's Mexican Silver: 20th Century Handwrought Jewelry & Metalwork. It has been reissued since Spratling's death in two later forms, one in gold with amethysts and one in silver with obsidian, a measure of the design's lasting demand.