Silson Serpent Head Brooch

A serpent's head, designed by Spratling but produced by the licensee Silson in silver plate, carries his most enduring motif into a different material and market. The serpent ran through Spratling's whole career, rooted in the pre-Columbian imagery he drew on from the start.

Spratling described his early designs as almost literal borrowings from Aztec and Colonial sources, pre-Columbian seals becoming brooches as a point of departure for new work (Morrill, pdf p. 39). Silson, the New York firm that began making Spratling designs in 1941 (Morrill, p. 257), used this serpent head on several of its pins, while Spratling's own production of the design was limited to a button, executed in two sizes in 980 silver.

That contrast, a Silson plated brooch against Spratling's silver button, marks the boundary between the licensed American line and the Taxco workshop's output, and makes this brooch a document of how the serpent motif circulated.