Earrings of Silver and Rosewood

Curled rosewood extending from silver marked with matching striations gives these earrings their unity, the wood and metal sharing a single worked surface pattern. The rosewood roll scrolls away from the silver, and the parallel striations carried across both materials tie the two halves into one continuous design.

The earrings reached a wide audience: the design appeared in the Montgomery Ward Christmas book of 1943, where the catalog described them as "rosewood and silver earrings with roll scroll bottom" priced at $8.75. Spratling's relationship with Montgomery Ward placed his designs before a broad American market during the war years (Morrill, p. 53).

The piece is recorded in The Christmas Book 1943 by Montgomery Ward. Early wood-and-silver earrings of this kind come to market only occasionally, and the documented catalog appearance anchors the design firmly in its period.