Porringer Salt Dish

An individual porringer-type salt dish that Spratling himself called an Aztec chalice while listing it in his wholesale catalogue as a salt dish, this early design sits exactly at the meeting point of Pre-Columbian reference and useful tableware. It belongs to the first design period, 1931 to 1946.

The double naming is telling: the form carries the dignity of an Aztec chalice while functioning as a table salt, the kind of fusion of a Pre-Columbian element with a European utilitarian object that ran through early Taxco design. Spratling's earliest work drew openly on Aztec and Colonial sources as a point of departure for new forms (Morrill, p. 39).

A small object with a grand name, it captures how Spratling cast everyday silver in the language of Mexico's ancient past.