Jaguar Covered Sugar Bowl

A covered silver sugar bowl with ebony handles, crowned by a seated jaguar finial, this is a sculptural component of Spratling's celebrated Jaguar coffee and tea service. The jaguar finial turns a utilitarian lid into a piece of figural sculpture, carrying the pre-Columbian feline that Spratling rendered as form and pattern across his work (Morrill, p. 73).

The ebony handles set warm dark wood against the silver body, the kind of metal-and-wood pairing Spratling pursued in his later hollowware. The lid is detachable, and the whole reads as a small, complete object within the larger service.

A note of nuance attaches to the finial: Spratling's catalog photographs of the service show the sugar and creamer with round finials rather than jaguar ones, though many examples with jaguar finials are believed to have been made. The bowl is recorded in the Centennial Edition of Cederwall and Riney's Spratling Silver, in La Platería Mexicana, and in Penny Morrill's William Spratling and the Mexican Silver Renaissance: Maestros de Plata.

With that documentation and its place in the Jaguar service, the bowl is a well-anchored example of Spratling's mature figural hollowware, which comes to market only occasionally.