Tiered Azur Malachite Bracelet

Three tiers of faceted azur malachite, banked across a silver cuff, give this bracelet an architectural density unusual in Spratling's First Design Period work. The faceting catches light in a way his more typical cabochons do not, and the stacked rows make the stone, not the metal, the body of the piece.

Azur malachite was a stone Spratling returned to repeatedly, including in variations on his North Star design (Morrill, p. 66). Banking it in tiers across a cuff is a confident handling of native semiprecious material, set into hand-wrought silver in the manner that defined his early jewelry.

The bracelet is recorded in Penny Morrill's Maestros de Plata.