Double Row Frog Bracelet

A link bracelet built from a double row of frogs in silver-plated pot metal, this is a Spratling design produced by Victor Silson in the early 1940s. The frog, repeated in two rows, gives the bracelet a lively, almost teeming surface.

The frog is a Pre-Columbian creature, and its use fits Spratling's broader project of reviving ancient Mexican iconography in metal (Morrill, Mexican Silver, 1994, p. 14). Doubling the row turns a single animal motif into a dense, patterned band.

The piece 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 the hand-wrought silver of his Taxco workshop (Morrill, p. 251).

As a dated, manufacturer-identified Silson piece, the double-frog bracelet is a documented example of Spratling's licensed plate production, a category collectors keep separate from his silver because of its different material and value.