Hanging Ribbons Earrings

An amethyst, ringed by a wide loop and trailing tail, gives these earrings both a stone and the fluid form Spratling called "hanging ribbons": the violet cabochon is cradled within the curling band so that color and motion combine in one piece. The ribbon motif, used across the workshop's jewelry, here frames rather than stands alone.

The earrings reached a notably broad market. Per the existing record they were sold through Montgomery Ward for $14.95 in 1943, placing them among the Spratling designs that the catalog retailer carried to American buyers far from Taxco. That national distribution is part of the piece's significance, evidence of how the workshop's silver entered the mainstream market.

The earrings are recorded in Montgomery Ward's 1943 Christmas Book and its Spring 1944 catalog. Amethyst "hanging ribbons" earrings with documented catalog-retail history are collected as examples of Spratling's wartime commercial reach.