Silson Aztec Cuff Bracelet

A silver-plated cuff bracelet carrying a carved Aztec design, this is a Spratling design made not in his own workshop but by the Silson firm in the early 1940s. Spratling also produced the same carved Aztec design in a 980 silver version, so the bracelet exists in both a precious and a costume form.

The piece belongs to the Silson licensing episode, in which Spratling supplied designs to Victor Silson for production as silver-plated costume jewelry aimed at the United States market. These are authentic Spratling designs in a non-precious medium, set apart from the hand-wrought 980 silver of his Taxco shop (Morrill, Mexican Silver, 1994, p. 251).

The carved Aztec motif is core Spratling, drawn from the Pre-Columbian iconography he revived in metal (Morrill, p. 14). In the Silson version that design was cast and plated rather than hand-wrought.

The existence of a parallel 980 silver version makes this bracelet a clear case study in how a single Spratling design moved between his own workshop and the licensed plate production, a distinction collectors weigh carefully when valuing the two.