Square Tortoise Shell Cuff Links

Silver-backed cuff links set with squares of tortoiseshell, these turn on Spratling's favored contrast of organic material against metal, scaled down to the smallest of accessories. The design appears in all of Spratling's wholesale catalogues from 1958 through 1967.

Tortoiseshell framed in silver is the same textural interplay Morrill notes across Spratling's work of the period (Morrill, p. 73), here giving men's furnishings a quiet richness. The nine-year run in the catalogues marks it as a steady seller rather than a one-off.

A companion to the tortoiseshell earrings of the same line, it documents how Spratling extended a single material idea across a family of objects.