Silson Eagle and Snake Brooch

This brooch depicts the eagle and the serpent, the central image of the Mexican national emblem, here produced in silver plate by Silson. The subject ties the piece directly to Mexico's founding iconography, the eagle gripping the snake, rendered as a wearable plaque in the accessible plated medium rather than solid silver.

The design was also made in silver and produced by Spratling himself, so the Silson plated version exists alongside an authentic Spratling original. Silson, a United States costume-jewelry maker, produced plated interpretations of Spratling motifs during the 1940s, and pieces like this one circulated as affordable counterparts to the handwrought silver work.

A plated Silson brooch sits at the commercial edge of the Spratling story, documenting how his Mexican-motif designs reached a mass American market in the war years. For collectors it is the relationship between the plated Silson piece and the solid-silver Spratling original that gives the object its interest, marking the line between the workshop's handwrought silver and its licensed plated echoes.