Amethyst Cross Mounted on Silver

An amethyst cross mounted on silver and hung from a silver chain, this piece lets the violet stone carry the religious form while the metal serves as mount and suspension. The choice to make the cross itself from amethyst rather than silver gives the object its color and weight, the native Guerrero stone shaped into a devotional emblem.

The cross dates to Spratling's First Design Period, 1931 to 1946, the years when the Las Delicias workshop established its pairing of silver with regional stones. A stone-bodied cross sits within that early vocabulary, where amethyst recurs across his pins, rings, and necklaces of the period.

The piece is recorded in the literature, appearing in Morrill and Berk's Mexican Silver: 20th Century Handwrought Jewelry and Metalwork, the standard reference for the field. Its inclusion documents the amethyst cross among the recognized designs of his early years.

Spratling, who founded the Taxco silver revival in 1931, made native stones like amethyst a defining element of his early palette, and a cross cut from the stone itself is a direct expression of that material emphasis. The piece carries devotional subject and regional material together in a single object.