Deer Motif Bracelet

A bracelet of three oval links, each worked in repoussé with a deer, this piece carries one of the animal motifs Spratling drew from Mexico's design heritage onto a wearable form. It dates to the first design period, 1931 to 1946, and is recorded in Penny Morrill's William Spratling and the Mexican Silver Renaissance.

The repoussé deer, raised from the back of the silver, gives each link a small relief panel, the figural subject set within the disciplined link structure typical of the early workshop. Pre-Columbian and Mexican animal motifs were among the sources Spratling described turning into jewelry in his early years (Morrill, p. 39).

A figural bracelet from the formative period, it shows the workshop combining relief imagery with the architecture of linked silver.