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An eagle's head in profile, worked in silver, this early pin draws on the native iconography that ran through Spratling's First Period designs, the bird rendered as a flattened, graphic silhouette. The eagle belongs to the Aztec and Colonial vocabulary he named as the basis of his early work (Morrill, Mexican Silver, 1994, p. 156).
The desirability of the design is reflected in its imitation: a variation was produced by Serafin Moctezuma, a silversmith who often copied Spratling designs. That early Spratling work was widely copied within Taxco is itself part of the historical record (Morrill, p. 156).
Early profile pins of native subjects come to market only occasionally.
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