Tortoise Shell Crescent Buckle

Alternating silver and tortoiseshell crescents ring a tortoiseshell center in this buckle, a fairly early use of the shell that would become one of Spratling's signature materials. The piece belongs to the First Design Period, before the silver-and-tortoiseshell pairing matured into the deliberate strategy of his later work.

Morrill identifies that interplay of silver with tortoiseshell as central to Spratling's design thinking, the emphasis falling on the richness and textural contrast between bright metal and warm shell (Morrill, Mexican Silver, 1994, p. 73). Here the crescents turn that contrast into a radial rhythm around the central panel.

The buckle is recorded in the Cederwall and Riney Spratling Silver volumes and in Goddard's Spratling Silver: A Field Guide. As an early instance of the material, it marks the beginning of a pairing Spratling would return to for decades.