Pedestal Silver Bowl

Stripped to a simple raised form on a pedestal band, this bowl represents the pared-down direction Spratling's holloware took in his third design period. There is no applied ornament; the design rests entirely on proportion and the line of the foot.

Morrill describes exactly this tendency in the work of these years, objects "pared down to its simplest outline" (Morrill, p. 73). The classic silhouette here, a clean bowl lifted on a band, is that principle applied to a serving form.

Made in the third period and reduced to its essentials, the bowl belongs to the strain of Spratling's late holloware where restraint itself was the design, and such unadorned pieces turn up at auction only occasionally.