Aztec Sun Brooch

A stylized Aztec sun brooch with rays worked in copper sets two metals against each other, the warm copper rays radiating from a silver center. The sun was a charged motif drawn from Mexico's indigenous past, part of the imagery Spratling's designers used to give their work a Mexican identity (Stromberg, p. 25). The mixed metals give the piece color without a stone. It is recorded in Phyllis Goddard's Spratling field guide.

The brooch dates from the first design period, 1931 to 1946, the founding years of Spratling's Las Delicias taller in Taxco.

Mixed-metal work that pairs silver with copper is a distinctive thread in the early output, and a sun face that uses the contrast of the two metals to render its rays is a clear example of the workshop's Mexican design sources realized in material.