Amethyst Cabochon Pill Box

A pillbox crowned with a single hinged amethyst cabochon collapses the line between jewelry and useful object, the violet stone serving as both clasp and ornament on a small silver vessel. The pairing of polished silver with native amethyst is characteristic of Spratling's First Design Period work, after the 1931 founding of the Taller de Las Delicias.

Spratling favored a higher silver content, the 980 alloy of twenty parts copper to nine hundred eighty parts silver, prized for its softer patina and slower oxidation than sterling (Morrill, Mexican Silver, 1994, p. 36). On a small hand object meant to be handled, that warmer surface matters.

Functional silver of this scale, a personal accessory rather than a brooch or bracelet, surfaces only occasionally and carries the same material logic that ran through the larger workshop output.