Sun and Moon Brooch

A two-faced brooch carrying contrasting sun and moon imagery, this piece sets a warm amber-toned face with open mouth and eyes against a silver face shown in profile with a star, joining two opposed celestial emblems in a single circular form roughly 8.6 centimeters across. The duality of sun and moon is the design's organizing idea, the two faces answering each other across the disc.

The brooch combines repoussé technique with mixed metals, the silver worked in relief and set against the brass that supplies the warm tone of the sun face. The pairing of silver and brass to achieve contrasting colors is a recurring device in the Taxco school, here used to distinguish the two celestial faces by material as well as form.

The piece is documented in Stromberg's Silver Seduction (2008), p. 97, fig. 59, placing it within the published record of Spratling's work. It dates to 1942 to 1946, the First Design Period, and carries the circular Spratling mark with the conjoined WS in sans-serif font.

Spratling, who founded the Taxco silver revival in 1931, drew steadily on Mexican cosmological and Pre-Columbian imagery, and a sun-and-moon brooch built in repoussé and mixed metals is a vivid expression of that source. A documented First-Period brooch joining two celestial faces sits among the recognized examples of his figural silver.