Round Ashtray on Pedestal Set with Inset Azure Malachite

A round ashtray raised on a pedestal and set with inset azur malachite, this piece carries the banded blue-green stone into Spratling's hollowware during his second design period. The malachite, one of the semiprecious materials he favored in these years and explored in his "North Star" pieces, supplies a jewel-like accent to a functional silver form (Morrill, p. 66).

The pedestal lifts the dish and gives the object a small architectural presence, while the inset stone reads as a single point of color against the silver. It is the same disciplined pairing of stone and metal that runs through Spratling's second-period jewelry, here applied to a tabletop object.

A drawing of a similar ashtray design appears in the William Spratling Folio of Drawings, connecting the piece to Spratling's own design process. It is recorded in El Arte en la Vida Diaria: Exposición de Objetos de Buen Diseño Hechos en México and in Phyllis Goddard's Spratling Silver: A Field Guide.

With that documentation and its inset stone, the ashtray is a well-anchored example of Spratling's second-period hollowware. Pieces combining malachite with silver hollowware come to market only occasionally.