Description
William Spratling(1900-1967) Taxco Modernist sterling mixed metal cufflinks.<br>Each side 18mm x 14mm, 15.3 grams. William Spratling(1900-1967) Spratling, an<br>architect and artist who taught at Tulane University in New Orleans, came to<br>Mexico in the late 1920s and settled in the city of Taxco. Having developed an<br>interest in Mesoamerican archaeology and culture from his colleagues at Tulane,<br>he traveled to Mexico for several summers lecturing and exploring. He sought out<br>remote villages in the state of Guerrero, 110 miles from Mexico City, where in<br>some places Nahuatl, the Aztec language, was spoken. Spratling collected<br>artifacts and contemporary indigenous crafts. Spratling made a fortune<br>manufacturing and designing silver, but his true life's work was to conserve,<br>redeem, and interpret the ancient culture of his adopted country. He explained<br>for North American audiences the paintings of Mexico's modern masters and earned<br>distinction as a learned and early collector of pre-Columbian art. Spratling and<br>his workshop gradually became a visible and culturally attractive link between a<br>steady stream of notable American visitors and the country they wanted to see<br>and experience. Spratling had the rare good fortune to witness his own<br>reputation -- as one of the most admired Americans in Mexico -- assume legendary<br>status before his death. William Spratling, His Life and Art vividly<br>reconstructs this richly diverse life whose unique aesthetic legacy is but a<br>part of its larger cultural achievement of profoundly influencing Americans'<br>attitudes toward a civilization different from their own.
