Button Divided Into Six Segments

A silver button divided into six segments, each carrying a small silver bead, this is a compact exercise in radial symmetry, the kind of well-resolved small form Spratling's workshop could carry across several object types. The six beads punctuate the divisions and give a flat disc a worked, dimensional surface.

The design's reach into the wider market is part of its story: Montgomery Ward sold it as earrings for $2.50 in 1943. Spratling's relationship with Montgomery Ward placed his designs before a broad American audience during the war years, the same channel that carried his other small silver (Morrill, p. 53).

The button is recorded in Penny Morrill and Carole Berk's Mexican Silver: 20th Century Handwrought Jewelry & Metalwork, which documents this body of small-format work. Examples come to market only occasionally.