Tortoise Shell Dragonfly Brooch

This dragonfly brooch is one of William Spratling's enduring commercial successes, a design that stayed in his catalog for about a decade and was made in various sizes. Spratling, the American who founded the Taxco silver revival in the 1930s, is best remembered for one-off and short-run work, so a motif with this kind of staying power is notable on its own terms.

The brooch renders a dragonfly in silver with wings of tortoise shell, the translucent material set into the body to catch light differently than the surrounding metal. It belongs to Spratling's Third Design Period of 1951 to 1967. The design's popularity is legible in the catalog record: the 1958-59 wholesale price was \$2.40, and by 1967 it had risen to \$3.20.

Because it ran for so long, the brooch appears with more than one mark, made with the WS script circle and the WS script square hallmarks, and it was also reissued in all silver and in materials other than tortoise shell. Those variations make it a useful study piece for understanding how a single Spratling design evolved in production.

The brooch is recorded across the principal Spratling references, including Morrill and Berk's Mexican Silver: 20th Century Handwrought Jewelry & Metalwork, Cederwall and Riney's Spratling Silver, Davis and Pack's Mexican Jewelry, and Goddard's Spratling Silver: A Field Guide.