Largest Volteo Coffee Pot

The largest size of Spratling's Volteo pattern coffee pot, this is a major statement in his hollowware, a fully resolved serving vessel in silver with rosewood. The Volteo was a named pattern in Spratling's production, and at its largest scale the coffee pot carries the design with real presence, the rosewood elements warming the substantial silver body.

The pot anchors a coordinated group: it was made in two smaller sizes, and a companion sugar and creamer were produced to match. That suite logic, a single pattern worked across a service in graduated sizes, is characteristic of Spratling's ambitious hollowware.

The coffee pot was included in the 1965 traveling U.S. museum exhibition "The World of William Spratling," placing it before a national audience. It is recorded in Cederwall and Riney's Spratling Silver, in Penny Morrill and Carole Berk's Mexican Silver: 20th Century Handwrought Jewelry & Metalwork, and in La Platería Mexicana.

With its exhibition history and standing across the literature, the largest Volteo coffee pot is among the well-anchored examples of Spratling's hollowware, the kind of major piece that comes to market only occasionally.