Large Chupamirto Azteca Brooch

This is a Spratling design produced not in Taxco but by the Silson firm in silver plate, made in several sizes, of which this is the largest. Spratling called the design Chupamirto Azteca, the same name he gave a major silver necklace, and the Silson pins were made in the early 1940s.

The piece documents a specific commercial chapter: Spratling licensed designs to Victor Silson, who produced them as silver-plated costume pieces for the United States market in the early 1940s. The result is an authentic Spratling design executed in a non-precious medium by an outside manufacturer, distinct from his hand-wrought Taxco silver (Morrill, Mexican Silver, 1994, p. 251).

The Chupamirto Azteca motif itself belongs to Spratling's Pre-Columbian vocabulary, the ancient iconography he set out to revive (Morrill, p. 14). Here that motif reached a wider, more affordable audience through plate.

For collectors, the Silson pieces occupy a particular niche: genuine Spratling designs, but mass-produced in plate rather than hand-wrought in silver. Identifying the largest size of this brooch is the kind of distinction that defines the Silson sub-category of his work.