Wide Band Ring with Three Cascabels

A wide band carrying three cascabels, small bells, this ring is an early Spratling design that draws on a deeply Mexican ornamental tradition. The cascabel, with its roots in pre-Columbian and folk silver, belongs to the native vocabulary Spratling mined in the First Design Period.

He described those early years as producing forms taken "almost literally" from Aztec and Colonial motives, used as a point of departure for new work (Morrill, Mexican Silver, 1994, p. 156). A wide silver band hung with bells turns that borrowed vocabulary into something both ornamental and audible.

Early rings of this kind come to market only occasionally.