Description
The hinged bracelet with raised, bypass spiraled silver design terminating with<br>two pear-shaped cabochon amethysts, with pin closure; mounted in sterling<br>silver; inner circumference 6 3/8 in.; signed WS Spratling Made In Mexico,<br>Sterling<br><br><br>Spratling, an architect and artist who taught at Tulane University in New<br>Orleans, came to Mexico in the late 1920s and settled in the city of Taxco.<br>Having developed an interest in Mesoamerican archaeology and culture from his<br>colleagues at Tulane, he traveled to Mexico for several summers lecturing and<br>exploring. He sought out remote villages in the state of Guerrero, 110 miles<br>from Mexico City, where in some places Nahuatl, the Aztec language, was spoken.<br>Spratling collected artifacts and contemporary indigenous crafts.<br><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.<br><br>Spratling had the rare good fortune to witness his own reputation -- as one of<br>the most admired Americans in Mexico -- assume legendary status before his<br>death. William Spratling, His Life and Art vividly reconstructs this richly<br>diverse life whose unique aesthetic legacy is but a part of its larger cultural<br>achievement of profoundly influencing Americans' attitudes toward a civilization<br>different from their own.
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