Triangular Tortoise Shell Button

A triangular button of tortoiseshell with a silver triangle set at its center, this piece pairs a warm organic material against cool metal in a single clean geometric form. Spratling used the interplay of silver with tortoiseshell elsewhere in his work, valuing the richness and textural contrast the two materials produced together (Morrill, p. 73).

The design's logic is simple and strong: a triangle within a triangle, the silver center reading against the mottled shell. It is the kind of reductive, material-driven statement that distinguishes Spratling's small-format work, where a single contrast carries the design.

The button is recorded in the literature, appearing in Mary Davis and Greta Pack's Mexican Jewelry and in Phyllis Goddard's Spratling Silver: A Field Guide. Tortoiseshell-and-silver pieces of this kind come to market only occasionally.