Amethyst Tulip Earrings

An amethyst rendered as a tulip and set into a silver cuff, these earrings turn a single cabochon into a recognizable flower, the violet stone shaped and mounted so the form reads as a bloom held in metal. The pairing of native Guerrero amethyst with silver is the early Spratling formula, here organized around a floral motif.

The tulip design extended across a small coordinated group: Spratling used the same motif in an all-silver earring and designed a complementary pin in silver and amethyst. The earrings therefore belong to a related family of pieces rather than standing alone, documenting how a single motif moved across his jewelry.

The piece is recorded in the literature, appearing in Morrill and Berk's Mexican Silver: 20th Century Handwrought Jewelry and Metalwork and in Cederwall and Riney's Spratling Silver, the two principal references for his work. An amethyst-tulip earring documented in both, and tied to a matching pin and silver variant, sits well within the recognized corpus of his stone-set jewelry.