Necklace of Oval Tubes and Discs

A necklace built from oval tubes and discs distills the geometric, almost industrial side of Spratling's jewelry, where the ornament is the rhythm of repeated simple forms rather than any applied decoration. Strung as alternating tubes and flat discs, it belongs to the strain of his work that shared a geometric approach to form with the European designers Morrill sets him beside (Morrill, p. 224).

The design was also produced incorporating obsidian "buttons," the dark volcanic stone giving the same composition a different weight and color; the all-silver version here is a reissue. That variability of materials over a single design was characteristic of how the workshop returned to a successful form.

Recorded in Goddard's Spratling Silver: A Field Guide, the necklace carried steadily through the catalogs, wholesaling at $16.12 in 1958-59, $16.00 in the 1961 Spratling catalog, and $20 by 1967. Original and reissued examples are told apart by hallmark and construction.