The Color of Silver

Appearing in 2000, these two books commemorated the birth of William Spratling (1900–1967). He was an artist, writer, collector, perhaps best known as the Cellini of Taxco for his designs in silver and his successful efforts to revive silver craftsmanship there. Spratling completed an autobiography, File on Spratling (1967), shortly before his death in an automobile accident, but the volumes under review are the first book-length studies of his multifaceted career. Both books recount the principal events of his life, but each emphasizes different aspects of that life. Each has numerous strengths and a few weaknesses that reflect the background of its author. Littleton has published extensively on topics in literature and the humanities, and Mark has written several works in the history of anthropology; neither is a Mexican specialist.Spratling was born in Sonyea, New York, where his father, a physician, was superintendent of a state institution for epileptics. Spratling’s childhood was marked by loss, for his mother and one of his sisters died in 1910, his father in 1915, and his guardian (and uncle) in 1916. Mark passes over Spratling’s formative years in two pages. Littleton gives a much fuller account, based on letters found in the family home in Alabama. Spratling studied architecture at Auburn University, but left without a degree to become an instructor in architecture at Tulane University. Littleton devotes two chapters to Spratling’s years in New Orleans (1922–29), where he won recognition as an artist, especially for his architectural drawings. He was part of a Bohemian community that included Sherwood Anderson and William Faulkner, then virtually unknown, who was his roommate for two years and his collaborator on a book of caricatures, Sherwood Anderson and Other Famous Creoles (1926).Spratling first went to Mexico in the summer of 1926, with a contract from Architectural Forum for drawings of colonial buildings. After visits in the summers of 1927 and 1928, he moved to Mexico permanently in 1929, settling in Taxco, then a picturesque but impoverished village that had once been an important mining center. From the outset, he immersed himself in Mexico’s lively cultural scene, hobnobbing with Diego Rivera, Miguel Covarrubias, and other artists and intellectuals. He also formed friendships with American visitors and expatriates in Mexico, and two women he had known in New Orleans—journalist Natalie Scott and Elizabeth Anderson, Sherwood’s ex-wife—moved to Taxco. In 1932 he published Little Mexico (reprinted as A Small Mexican World in 1964), in which he sketched with words and drawings a portrait of Taxco and its people and of nearby regions. Spratling, nearly always short of money, hoped that the book would bring a good financial return, but was disappointed.It is in their discussion of Spratling’s work as a silver designer and entrepreneur that the two accounts diverge the most. They even disagree on the year— 1932 or 1933—in which Spratling opened a workshop where Mexican craftsmen produced jewelry, tableware, and other objects in accordance with his designs. According to Mark, Spratling developed a distinctive style, later emulated by other designers in Taxco: “The characteristics of the style are clean, modern lines; animal, plant, and pre-Columbian motifs; and combinations of silver with semiprecious stones, wood, and tortoise shell” (pp. 52–53).Less than a third of Littleton’s text is devoted to Spratling’s silver enterprises, while the proportions are reversed in Mark’s book. In addition, Littleton covers the last 30 years of Spratling’s life in two brief chapters. By contrast, about half of Mark’s text is given over to this period. She gives a clearer account than Littleton of Taxco’s boom in silver production during World War II, the overexpansion of Spratling’s business, and its collapse in 1945. Spratling resumed his silver designs in the late 1940s and established a new workshop at a ranch he had purchased outside of Taxco. Mark also deals more systematically than Littleton with Spratling’s controversial activities as a collector and dealer in pre-Columbian art. He was suspected of selling fakes and of illegally trafficking in antiquities not eligible for export at a time when Mexican laws on the matter were rarely enforced.Another topic that the two authors approach differently is Spratling’s sexuality. Littleton does not mention the subject until page 231, when he refers to Spratling’s homosexual tendencies, which he says “had lain discreetly latent” in New Orleans and during his early years in Mexico. Mark traces evidence of Spratling’s homosexuality from the outset, even reporting a rumor that it was a homosexual incident that led to his resignation from Tulane in 1928. A young Mexican who, according to Mark, was called the great love of Spratling’s life, goes unmentioned by Littleton.In sum, the two biographies complement each other. Littleton can be consulted by those especially interested in Spratling’s early life, his relations with Faulkner and other American literary figures, and in his writings and drawings. Mark will appeal to those interested primarily in Spratling’s work in silver and in his later years. Both volumes are based on manuscript and printed sources, though Mark also cites numerous interviews. Littleton’s style is somewhat convoluted, but in general both books are clearly written. Both texts are enhanced by well-chosen black-and-white illustrations.Spratling left his mark on Mexico in several ways. In addition to the high aesthetic and monetary value assigned to his own designs, he is universally credited with stimulating the revival of silver craftsmanship in Taxco, which remains Mexico’s leading silversmithing center. Another legacy is the museum in Taxco housing his collection of Guerrero antiquities. Spratling was also an important interpreter of Mexican culture in the United States during the 1920s and 1930s. As scholars broaden their conceptualization of U.S.-Latin American relations to include nongovernmental actors and issues, figures like Spratling will increasingly command the attention of historians

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