Large Silver Punch Bowl on a Silver Foot

This large silver punch bowl carries a piece of its own history: per the existing record it was ordered in 1942 by Mexican President Manuel Avila Camacho as a gift for his wife, who, on coming to Taxco to collect it, judged it too plain and refused it. The austere design she rejected, three applied rimmed silver half-balls alternating with three rimmed amethysts around a hand-hammered body, is exactly the restraint that now reads as modern.

The bowl rises on a silver foot with a rolled rim at the top and hammered marks across the interior, the surface left to show the handwork. The alternation of the workshop's half-ball motif with the violet Mexican stone, set against a plain hammered ground, is characteristic of how Spratling let a few strong elements carry a large form.

The piece is recorded in Penny C. Morrill's William Spratling and the Mexican Silver Renaissance: Maestros de Plata. A documented presidential commission, even a refused one, makes this among the more historically resonant objects of the early hollowware.