Small Shell Earrings

These shell earrings translate a natural form into handwrought silver, the shell's fluted curve worked into a small wearable relief. Spratling designed the shell in both more horizontal and more vertical orientations, and used the same shell form in necklaces, so the earrings belong to a coordinated motif rather than a one-off design.

The earrings carry an unusually concrete commercial record: they were offered in the 1943 Montgomery Ward Christmas Catalog at $2.95, and appear in the Spring 1944 Montgomery Ward catalog as well. That documentation places them within Spratling's wartime arrangement with Montgomery Ward, the period when his handwrought Mexican silver reached American buyers through a mass mail-order channel (Morrill, p. 53).

A modestly priced pair of earrings from the Montgomery Ward years is a tangible record of how broadly Spratling silver circulated during the war, when it was sold to a national audience rather than only to gallery and resort clienteles. The catalog listings make the shell earrings one of the better-documented small designs of that moment.