Necklace with Silver Twists and Amethyst Dangles

Deep purple amethyst against bright twisted silver gives this necklace the chunky, sculptural presence that became a signature of the Taxco school. Three spherical amethyst cabochons hang from a framework of undulating serpentine links joined by smaller rings, one stone at center and two at the sides. It is a design of exactly the kind that first defined Spratling for collectors abroad. Penny Morrill recounts being introduced to Mexican silver through a chunky Spratling necklace set with amethyst cabochons, a design she calls timeless because it looked as contemporary in the 1980s as it must have in the decade it was made (Morrill, pdf p. 12).

The stones are set so that color and metal carry equal weight. The amethysts read as solid drops of saturated purple, while the looping silver links supply movement and rhythm around them. Nothing is delicate or filigreed; the appeal is mass, surface, and the contrast of warm stone against cool metal.

The necklace comes out of the workshop tradition Spratling built in Taxco, where designs were realized by master smiths working in teams and where semi-precious stone was set into substantial silver forms. The serpentine link is a modern, abstracted line rather than a literal motif, which is consistent with how that workshop reworked its sources.

Recorded in Gobi Stromberg's Silver Seduction: The Art of Mexican Modernist Antonio Pineda (2008, p. 91, plate 78), the necklace bears Spratling's circular conjoined-WS hallmark. Documented Spratling stone-set necklaces of this type are seen at auction only occasionally.