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A caviar choker, its closely massed silver beadwork inlaid with turquoise, wraps the throat in granulated texture broken by points of blue-green stone. The form belongs to Spratling's First Design Period, when turquoise and other native stones entered his silver as color and accent.
The dense, beaded surface gives the necklace the tactile richness Morrill identifies in Spratling's work, where texture and the contrast of materials carried the design (Morrill, Mexican Silver, 1994, p. 73). Turquoise against 980 silver, the alloy he favored for its softer patina (Morrill, p. 36), sets a cool stone against a warm metal.
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