Wide Band Amethyst Ring

This wide-banded ring is built around a single cabochon amethyst flanked by silver beads, with a silver ball set both above and below the stone, so the violet cabochon sits within a small architecture of metal punctuation. The arrangement gives a broad band a clear center and rhythm, the beads and balls framing the native Guerrero stone.

The design was also made in an all-silver version, with an additional silver bead replacing the amethyst cabochon, so the ring exists both as a stone-set and a purely metallic form. That parallel documents how Spratling could carry a single design across the presence or absence of a stone, offering color or austerity on the same band.

The ring dates to Spratling's First Design Period, 1931 to 1946, when the pairing of silver with native amethyst was central to the Las Delicias workshop's vocabulary. A wide band combining amethyst with applied silver beads is a compact example of that early stone-and-metal formula.