Copper Powder Box

A circular powder box of silver and copper, rising on a slightly domed base to a tiered lid crowned by a large silver ball, is among the most elaborate small objects in Spratling's holloware, and the only powder box recorded in any of his wholesale catalogues, where it appeared just once. That single listing makes it a genuine rarity within his output.

The decoration is dense and deliberate: bands of chased flat circles across box and base, four diagonal segments flanked by incised lines and separated by diagonal copper bands, with a twisted rope of copper and silver at the base of the crowning ball. The interplay of silver and copper, and the rope and beadwork, are Spratling devices, the rope motif tracing back to the cord designs he named among his earliest sources (Morrill, pdf p. 39). The mixing of silver with a warmer metal echoes the material contrasts running through his work (Morrill, p. 224).

The box is recorded in Goddard's Spratling Silver field guide. A piece this elaborately worked, catalogued only once and made as a single powder-box design, comes to market very rarely.