Description
William Spratling(1900-1967) Taxco Modernist sterling stone inlaid cufflinks,<br>fully functional with no issues. 27mm wide, 17.4 gramsWilliam<br>Spratling(1900-1967) Spratling, an architect and artist who taught at Tulane<br>University in New Orleans, came to Mexico in the late 1920s and settled in the<br>city of Taxco. Having developed an interest in Mesoamerican archaeology and<br>culture from his colleagues at Tulane, he traveled to Mexico for several summers<br>lecturing and exploring. He sought out remote villages in the state of Guerrero,<br>110 miles from Mexico City, where in some places Nahuatl, the Aztec language,<br>was spoken. Spratling collected artifacts and contemporary indigenous crafts.<br>Spratling made a fortune manufacturing and designing silver, but his true life's<br>work was to conserve, redeem, and interpret the ancient culture of his adopted<br>country. He explained for North American audiences the paintings of Mexico's<br>modern masters and earned distinction as a learned and early collector of<br>pre-Columbian art. Spratling and his workshop gradually became a visible and<br>culturally attractive link between a steady stream of notable American visitors<br>and the country they wanted to see and experience. Spratling had the rare good<br>fortune to witness his own reputation -- as one of the most admired Americans in<br>Mexico -- assume legendary status before his death. William Spratling, His Life<br>and Art vividly reconstructs this richly diverse life whose unique aesthetic<br>legacy is but a part of its larger cultural achievement of profoundly<br>influencing Americans' attitudes toward a civilization different from their own.
