Obsidian Band Earrings

Three silver projections arranged into a triangle, bound by a band of obsidian, give these earrings a compact, almost sculptural geometry. The black obsidian closes the form and supplies the contrast, the silver projections doing the structural work.

Obsidian was a native material Spratling used throughout his jewelry, and the triangular, abstracted composition belongs to the Third Design Period (1951-1967), when his vocabulary of clean geometric form and inset native stone was fully settled (Morrill, p. 73).

The earrings are recorded in Penny Morrill's Maestros de Plata.