Shaped Silver Belt Buckle

A shaped silver belt buckle from Spratling's earliest period, this piece belongs to the form on which his workshop first built its reputation. The buckle is pure silver, its design carried entirely by the worked outline of the metal, the kind of object that established the weight and handfeel of Taxco silver.

The buckle dates to the First Design Period, 1931 to 1946. The earliest pieces produced in Spratling's workshop were simple half-dome earrings and heavy silver belt buckles, and in the first year coins of 0.925 silver were melted down to make the jewelry (Morrill, pdf p. 39). A shaped buckle from these years sits at the origin of the workshop's output.

Early silver buckles are foundational objects of the Taxco revival Spratling founded in 1931, the plain heavy forms from which the school's vocabulary grew. A shaped example from the First Period is a direct artifact of those formative years at Las Delicias.