Earrings of Six Pie Shaped Segments

Six pie-shaped segments, each topped with a small silver bead, divide these earrings into a neat radial composition, a design Spratling worked in contrasting light and dark finish. The Montgomery Ward description called them "round silver earrings in contrasting light and dark finish," a play of polished against oxidized surface within a single form.

That contrast of finish belongs to the textural surface treatments Spratling favored, the design carried by the interplay of bright and dark rather than by an applied stone. The earrings reached an American audience through the mail-order trade, offered in the 1943 Montgomery Ward Christmas Catalog for $2.50 and again in the Spring 1944 catalog, the relationship documented in Morrill (Morrill, Mexican Silver, 1994, p. 53).

Spratling used this same segmented design as buttons as well, carrying one motif across forms. Its catalog appearances tie the earrings to a specific moment in his reach into the United States.