Silson Double Tulip Brooch

Two horizontal flowers read as tulips, separated by a rope design, make up this Spratling-designed brooch, produced in silver-plated pot metal by the Silson Company in the early 1940s. The floral subject and the rope divider are pure Spratling vocabulary executed in a costume medium.

The brooch belongs to the Silson licensing episode, in which Spratling supplied designs that the firm produced as silver-plated costume jewelry for the United States market, distinct from his hand-wrought Taxco silver (Morrill, Mexican Silver, 1994, p. 251).

The rope element ties even this costume piece back to Spratling's foundational cord vocabulary, the saddle-derived rope designs that ran through his early work (Morrill, p. 39). The paired tulips give it a decorative, almost folk-floral character.

As a dated, manufacturer-identified Silson brooch, it is a clearly documented example of Spratling's licensed plate production, a category collectors track separately from his silver for its different material and value.