Moth Brooch with Inset Amethysts

A moth, its wings inset with amethysts, makes this brooch one of the figural insect and animal forms that ran through the Taxco workshop's First Design Period, the purple stones marking the wings against the silver body. The creature is given as a compact, naturalistic form rather than a flattened symbol.

The brooch was offered in the Montgomery Ward Christmas Book of 1943, the years Spratling silver reached a national American audience through the Ward catalogues (Morrill, p. 53), and it has since been reissued in an all-silver version, in keeping with the hand-wrought program that has carried the workshop's designs forward (Morrill, p. 251).

Recorded in the Morrill and Berk survey, in the Cederwall and Riney Spratling Silver volume, and in the 1943 Montgomery Ward catalogue, the moth is a well-documented example of the workshop's figural First Period jewelry, with the amethyst-set wings distinguishing the original from the later all-silver reissue.