Rope Design Ring

A wide silver band carries a rope design around its center, framed above and below by a single incised line, in a ring that traces its motif straight back to the workshop's origins.

Spratling recalled that his earliest rings and buckles "embodied cord designs derived from saddle ornaments" (Morrill, p. 39), the braided and roped patterns of Mexican leatherwork translated into silver. The rope on this band is that lineage, reduced to a clean architectural element between two incised lines.

It dates to the First Design Period, 1931 to 1946, the years in which the workshop established the design vocabulary that would define Mexican modern silver.