Boat Shaped Salt Dish

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Object record

Catalogue no.: MoMS-000829
Form: Salt Dish
Date: Third Design Period: 1951 - 1967
Materials: Silver
Dimensions: 1 3/8" x 2 1/2" x1 1/2"

Curatorial note

A boat-shaped salt dish riding on a footed rim, dressed with applied silver buttons and balls, distills Spratling's holloware vocabulary into a tabletop object. The applied beadwork is a recurring Spratling device, and on a form this small it becomes the whole ornament, catching light along the curved silhouette.

The design was included in the 1965 traveling exhibition The World of William Spratling, which the McNay Art Institute's John Leeper organized and which carried Spratling's silver and objects to museums across the United States alongside his Pre-Columbian collection and work by Diego Rivera and Miguel Covarrubias (Morrill, p. 77). That history places this model among the pieces Spratling himself wanted shown.

It is recorded in the Cederwall and Riney Spratling Silver, in Morrill and Berk's Mexican Silver, in La Platería Mexicana, and in Goddard's field guide, an unusually full documentary trail for a small salt. The design has since been reissued, so period examples are the ones collectors seek out.