Enameled Red Cross Brooch

This circular brooch is the only known example of Spratling enameling, made for the American Colony Committee of the Mexican Red Cross and inscribed accordingly, which makes it a genuine anomaly within an output otherwise defined by silver and stone. It is recorded in Penny C. Morrill's William Spratling and the Mexican Silver Renaissance: Maestros de Plata.

The enamel work and the commemorative inscription tie the piece to a specific wartime relief effort rather than to the workshop's commercial line, which is precisely what sets it apart. Where Spratling's design vocabulary normally turned on form, native stone, and the translation of Mexican motifs, here the technique itself is the exception.

As the single documented instance of the maker working in enamel, this brooch is of unusual interest to collectors and scholars of the workshop, valued for its rarity and its specific institutional history rather than for a repeated design.