Coffee Pot with Carved Rosewood Finial and Handle

Part of a coffee and tea service with matching covered sugar and open creamer, this pot has its handle and lid finial finished in finely carved rosewood, with silver-wire banding tying the design together. It is recorded in the Centennial edition of Cederwall and Riney's Spratling Silver and in Phyllis Goddard's field guide.

The carved rosewood and silver-wire banding are exactly the decorative elements Morrill associates with Spratling's table designs, warm wood set against silver, wire used as line (Morrill, p. 224). The design has a precise place in Spratling's history: after he resigned from Spratling y Artesanos in July 1945, he agreed to continue supplying new designs, and his October 1945 notes include instructions marked "importante" for this service, with drawings of the handle and banding (Morrill, p. 53).

Because Spratling y Artesanos declared bankruptcy and ceased operations in 1946, few of these services are thought to have been produced, which makes the design both well-documented and scarce.