Ring of Ebony with Silver Beads

Built from ebony and accented with silver beads, this ring makes the dark wood its body and reduces the silver to studded points of light along the band. The relationship is one of restraint: the ebony dominates while the beads give the eye a rhythm, an inversion of the usual silver-first construction.

The same design was made with gold beads, catalogued as AN-16A, so the ring exists in two metal variants on a single wooden form. That parallel documents how Spratling carried a design across material choices, offering the buyer the cooler silver or the warmer gold against the same ebony.

Wood-and-bead rings sit within the body of Spratling work built on organic materials, where ebony and rosewood served as deliberate partners to the metal rather than mere settings. A small ring offered in both silver and gold beading is a precise record of how a single design moved through the workshop's catalog.