Amethyst Frog Earrings

Carved amethyst frogs form these earrings, and the choice of subject is not incidental: the frog entered Spratling's vocabulary, by the account preserved in the record, through five tiny carved amethyst frogs taken from a tomb at Monte Alban near Oaxaca and made centuries earlier by a Zapotec artisan. The earrings translate that archaeological encounter directly into wearable form, the violet stone carved into the same small creature.

Monte Alban looms large in Spratling's sources: the spectacular Tomb 7 finds, published after their 1932 discovery, gave the Taxco designers a reservoir of Pre-Columbian forms to draw on (Morrill, p. 135). The amethyst frog is among the clearest instances of that influence, the ancient object remade in a contemporary stone.

The marks used together here appeared around 1942, per the existing record, placing the earrings in the First Design Period. Carved-stone figural earrings of this kind survive in small numbers and are prized for their direct link to Spratling's frog designs.