Lace Moons Earrings

Wire loops surrounding a central ball give these silver earrings the airy, openwork look that earned them the name "lace moons," the filigree figure-eights hanging below the ear. The design is pictured in Spratling's wholesale catalogues from 1942 through the 1944 to 1945 season and was offered through Montgomery Ward in 1943, where the catalogue described them as silver ball earrings with filigree figure-eights.

The earrings belong to the workshop's First Design Period and to its lighter, openwork vocabulary. Their distribution through Montgomery Ward placed them before a national American audience at an affordable price in the years Spratling silver reached the Ward catalogues (Morrill, p. 53).

Recorded in the 1943 Montgomery Ward Christmas Book and the Fall and Spring 1944 Ward catalogues, the "lace moons" are a well-documented example of the workshop's catalogue jewelry, their recurrence across several seasons pointing to a design with a steady audience.

Museum of International Folk Art, Santa FeSanta Fe, United States

Earrings, Mid-20th century

Accession A.2010.84.31ab. Official museum record Photo: Museum of International Folk Art, Santa Fe.

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