Child's Knife with Pierced Design

A child's knife sized for a small hand, pierced along the blade or handle, shows Spratling's tableware reaching into the most domestic corners of the dining table. The piece belonged to a three-piece child's set, and its light weight reflects a flatware program meant to be handled and used rather than displayed.

Spratling's flatware and holloware were hand-wrought in Taxco using techniques that changed little across his career (Morrill, p. 251), and pieces like this one moved through his wholesale catalogues, the set carrying a catalogue price in the late 1950s and again in the 1967 list. It is recorded in the Cederwall and Riney Spratling Silver, in Littleton's The Color of Silver, and in Goddard's field guide.

The design has been reissued by the firm that continues Spratling's line, which keeps the model in circulation but also makes period examples the ones collectors pursue. A complete child's set survives less often than its individual pieces.