Rolled Rim Oval Tray

An oval tray with inch-high sides and a rolled rim, this is restrained serving silver whose strength is in its clean profile. It belongs to the third design period, 1951 to 1967, was also made in a smaller size, and was included in the museum exhibit "The World of William Spratling" that traveled throughout the U.S. in 1965.

The rolled rim and low straight sides give the tray a quiet, functional elegance, the kind of unornamented form Spratling trusted to carry on proportion alone. That it was produced in more than one size reflects its place in the workshop's standardized later line.

That the design traveled in a U.S. museum exhibition speaks to how Spratling's holloware was received, and documented examples are collected as part of the later workshop's table silver.