Amethyst Bee Brooch

A silver brooch built around an amethyst, rendered as a stylized bee or other insect, shows Spratling reducing a living creature to clean abstract form. The insect is suggested rather than described, its body anchored by the colored stone in the manner Spratling used across his stone-set jewelry.

Amethyst recurs throughout his First Period work, and fitting the silver to the stone, building the design outward from the cut gem, was characteristic of his bench practice. The stylization keeps the brooch firmly in the modern idiom rather than the naturalistic, the form abstracted just far enough to read as an insect.

Stylized figural pins set with amethyst come to market only occasionally, and the insect form distinguishes this from his more common geometric stone settings.