Cuff Bracelet Overlaid with Tortoise Shell

A silver cuff overlaid with tortoiseshell and pinned by silver rivets that themselves form the pattern, this bracelet is the design often called the "pretzel." The rivets are not hidden fasteners but the ornament itself, organizing the surface as the tortoiseshell is bound to its silver backing.

The interplay of silver with tortoiseshell, and the textural contrast it produced, was a direction Spratling pursued into the early 1950s; Morrill describes the richness of that material pairing in his work of the period, and the silver-dot-and-circle vocabulary that gave such pieces a sense of playfulness and sophistication (Morrill, p. 73). This cuff sits squarely in the Second Design Period of 1949 to 1951.

It is recorded in Morrill's Maestros de Plata study and in Goddard's field guide. For collectors, the integration of the rivet as both structure and pattern, together with the documented place in the literature, makes it a recognizable and well-anchored Spratling form.