Amethyst Parrot Brooch

A parrot worked in silver and centered on a large cabochon amethyst, this brooch gives a figural bird subject the warmth and weight of a native Guerrero stone, the violet cabochon set into the body so the color anchors the composition. The bird is a recurring kind of subject in Spratling's early figural jewelry, here elevated by the scale of the single amethyst.

The brooch dates to Spratling's First Design Period, 1931 to 1946, and carries a precise commercial record: it is pictured in the Fall 1944 Montgomery Ward Catalog at a cost of $20.00. That listing places it within his wartime arrangement with Montgomery Ward, when his handwrought silver reached a national mail-order audience (Morrill, p. 53), and twenty dollars marks it as one of the more substantial pieces in that channel.

The brooch is recorded in the literature, appearing in Morrill and Berk's Mexican Silver: 20th Century Handwrought Jewelry and Metalwork alongside the Montgomery Ward citation. A figural brooch documented in both a scholarly reference and a period catalog is unusually well anchored.

Spratling, who founded the Taxco revival in 1931, paired figural Mexican subjects with native stones throughout his early work, and a parrot built around a large amethyst is a vivid example. The piece joins natural subject and regional material in the manner that defined his First Period jewelry.