William Spratling(1900-1967) Taxco Modernist sterling brown cufflinks

Description: William Spratling(1900-1967) Taxco Modernist sterling fist cufflinks, fully
functional with no issues. 22mm square, 12.7 grams. William Spratling(1900-1967)
Spratling, an architect and artist who taught at Tulane University in New
Orleans, came to Mexico in the late 1920s and settled in the city of Taxco.
Having developed an interest in Mesoamerican archaeology and culture from his
colleagues at Tulane, he traveled to Mexico for several summers lecturing and
exploring. He sought out remote villages in the state of Guerrero, 110 miles
from Mexico City, where in some places Nahuatl, the Aztec language, was spoken.
Spratling collected artifacts and contemporary indigenous crafts. Spratling made
a fortune manufacturing and designing silver, but his true life's work was to
conserve, redeem, and interpret the ancient culture of his adopted country. He
explained for North American audiences the paintings of Mexico's modern masters
and earned distinction as a learned and early collector of pre-Columbian art.
Spratling and his workshop gradually became a visible and culturally attractive
link between a steady stream of notable American visitors and the country they
wanted to see and experience. Spratling had the rare good fortune to witness his
own reputation -- as one of the most admired Americans in Mexico -- assume
legendary status before his death. William Spratling, His Life and Art vividly
reconstructs this richly diverse life whose unique aesthetic legacy is but a
part of its larger cultural achievement of profoundly influencing Americans'
attitudes toward a civilization different from their own.