Chalcedony Cornucopia Brooch

The marriage of a cast silver nautilus with three stone-set flower buds places design 2956 among the more evocative naturalist works from William Spratling's third and final design period. After leaving the main taller in the mid-1940s and moving to his ranch at Taxco-el-Viejo, Spratling's vocabulary shifted measurably: the pre-Columbian references — the Aztec bracelets and the parrots, owls, and jaguars he had fashioned in silver for decades — gave way to forms drawn more directly from the natural world around him.

Each flower bud is carved from a different patterned stone, the three specimens ranging from warm rose to cream-and-ochre to pale gray, their contrasting faces making clear that the stones were chosen individually rather than pulled from a single batch. Prong tips of silver brooch each carved blossom to a slender stem rising from the scrolled shell below, and the shell itself is cast and chased to give the spiral ridges real sculptural depth, anchoring the botanical arrangement above it.

The "Spratling Made in Mexico" circle mark and the "Spratling Silver" cartouche place the piece within the ranch-workshop production that ran through 1967. Third-period Spratling in this naturalist idiom unifies marine and botanical motifs through the counterpoint of polished metal and raw stone.

Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design MuseumNew York, United States

Brooch, 1940-1944

Accession 2019-21-1. Official museum record Photo: Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum.

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