Round Amethyst Earring

A round amethyst cabochon set in silver, this earring pairs the purple stone Spratling favored with a clean circular silver mount. The amethyst supplies the color and the focus, the silver doing little more than holding and framing it, the kind of restraint that lets a single stone carry an object.

The design had broad reach in its day. It appears in Spratling catalogs of 1942 to 1945 and was pictured in the Fall 1944 Montgomery Ward catalog at $11.75, the Montgomery Ward channel that placed Spratling's designs before a wide American audience during the war years (Morrill, p. 53).

Round amethyst earrings of this kind come to market only occasionally. With the stone, the catalog history, and the period recorded, the design is well placed within Spratling's first-period jewelry.