Earring Design Was Made Either with a Bronze Domed Center

A bronze domed center encircled by a wide rounded silver frame, this earring design was also made entirely in silver, the two versions sharing a single catalog identification number, a small window onto how the workshop organized a form across materials. The pairing of bronze with silver is the kind of metal-against-metal contrast Spratling favored in the First Design Period.

The earrings reached an American audience through Montgomery Ward, offered in the 1943 Christmas Catalog for $4.50 and again in the Spring 1944 catalog, the mail-order channel that carried Spratling silver across the United States. That relationship is documented in Morrill (Morrill, Mexican Silver, 1994, p. 53).

The design is recorded in Morrill and Berk's Mexican Silver: 20th Century Handwrought Jewelry & Metalwork. That one ID number covered both a bronze-centered and an all-silver version shows how the workshop catalogued variation within a single design.