Footed Silver Round Ashtray

Everyday holloware was part of the workshop's reach, and this footed round silver ashtray is a useful object made with the same hand-raising the talleres brought to their jewelry.

Ashtrays were a standing part of Spratling's table production; when the McNay Art Institute organized "The World of William Spratling" in 1965, ashtrays appeared on the published inventory alongside pitchers and trays (Morrill, p. 77). This one dates to the Second Design Period, 1949 to 1951, the brief interval between the original company's dissolution and the later Taxco-Viejo years.

Its plain footed form is modern silver at its most restrained, the value carried by the quality of the metal and the making rather than by ornament.