Large Silver Bowl with Three Silver Tabs

Spare in profile, this wide shallow bowl gains its accent from three silver tabs set with amethyst cabochons rising from the rim. The amethyst, a stone Spratling used repeatedly across his work, supplies the only color against an otherwise plain expanse of silver.

The design is a variant within his holloware: it follows an earlier bowl form but drops the wide rim around the top perimeter, so the eye goes straight to the cabochon-set tabs. That kind of measured variation, keeping a form and changing one element, is typical of how Spratling developed his catalogue.

Amethyst against silver was a favored Spratling pairing, and here it is used sparingly, three points of violet stone punctuating an austere first-period bowl. As a documented design variant in mixed materials it belongs to the studio's domestic holloware and is seen only occasionally at auction.