Single Strand Bead Necklace

A single strand of graduated silver beads is about as elemental as Spratling's jewelry gets, and that simplicity is the point. Bead necklaces sit at the foundation of his First Period output, when the earliest workshop pieces were as direct as half-dome earrings and heavy buckles.

Making silver beads in quantity was a defining workshop skill, the metal rolled thin to roughly twenty-four or twenty-eight gauge before being formed, as Morrill records of the era's silver work (Morrill, p. 36). A graduated strand asks for beads in a careful range of sizes, so even an unadorned necklace reflects that disciplined bench practice.

The graduation from small to large is what separates a considered design from a plain string of beads.