Framed Silver Ball Earrings

A silver ball framed within a lower wide circular band, these dangling earrings reached a national American audience through Montgomery Ward, which carried them in its 1943 Christmas catalogue with the description "Dangling silver earrings with large ball inside plain wide circle. $2.50." They are recorded in the Montgomery Ward catalogues of 1943 and 1944.

The simple geometry, a sphere set inside a ring, is the kind of reduced form the early workshop excelled at. Spratling silver was featured in the Montgomery Ward catalogues across 1943 to 1946 (Morrill, p. 257), and these earrings document that commercial chapter directly.

The catalogue listing fixes both the design and its modest price in the wartime mail-order market, a rare contemporary record of how Spratling jewelry was sold to American buyers.