Sterling Silver Post Earrings Made from Old Taxco Necklace Links

Description: Story time! I work for a jeweler. He has a customer who is a collector of important vintage Mexican silver jewelry (Spratling, Voorhies, Aguilar, etc.). She is very petite, so when she acquires a piece, she almost always ends up having my boss remove a link or otherwise scale the piece down. She never asks for the bits that are removed, and my boss usually just scraps them. But in this case, he decided to turn these links, originally from a necklace, into earrings. They had loops on each end, so he removed them, filed and polished the ends, refilled the black channels, added posts and voilà! Earrings! Now, he swears that whatever the original piece was, it was a Spratling, but I scoured my Mexican silver books and the internet until I thought my eyeballs would fry, and I could not find a Spratling piece with this exact link. That's fairly compelling (though not conclusive) evidence since Spratling's work is extremely well-documented. These links are definitely typical of important Spratling pieces, but I think the Spratling connection is pretty dubious. (All apologies to my boss, who is a genius, but he doesn't have much interest in Mexican -- or any other -- silver, being a diehard 18K gold guy.) I think the important point is that these links came from a piece that was purchased by an avid and knowledgeable collector. I therefore assume they are from Taxco and that they are vintage (which in this case I consider to be 1960 or earlier). I also think chances are excellent they were designed by an important artist. But they could just be from one of the many nearly anonymous Taxco silversmiths that churned out beautiful but highly imitative pieces. So that's the story behind these earrings. Regardless of who made them, they're a great design and my boss put the post near the top so they sit just right. Measurements: Each earring measures 1/2" wide, 3/4" tall and 3mm thick. (Note that the ears of all of my creepy earring mannequins are roughly life-sized.) Marks: These were unmarked, but I acid tested them and my boss stamped them "925." Total weight: 7 grams, not including the butterfly closures. (I will include sterling closures.) Condition: These were pretty scratched up and their center black channels were splotchy and faded, but my boss polished them up and redid the oxidization, so they're looking about as good as they looked when they rolled out of whatever Taxco workshop 60-odd years ago! Thanks for reading, and thanks for looking!

Price: 31.99 USD

Location: Los Angeles, California

End Time: 2025-01-19T02:22:53.000Z

Shipping Cost: 4.5 USD