Rosewood Tube Earrings

A silver tube flanked at each end by rosewood tubes gives these earrings a linear, almost modular form, three cylinders aligned in a single bright-and-dark sequence. The arrangement is purely structural, the silver center set between two segments of warm wood, with the contrast of materials carrying the design.

The pairing places the earrings in Spratling's third design period, when he worked the dialogue of wood and metal across his jewelry and hollowware (Morrill, p. 73). The tube-and-tube construction is among the most reductive expressions of that idea, geometry alone doing the work.

The earrings are recorded in Cederwall and Riney's Spratling Silver. Linear wood-and-silver earrings of this kind come to market only occasionally.