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Three conch-shell legs lift this medium silver bowl, a marine motif Spratling returned to repeatedly in his hollowware. The conch, a form he developed into a recognizable signature, gives a plain bowl its sculptural footing and ties the piece to the natural imagery that ran through his table silver.
The bowl belongs to the first design period, 1931-1946, the workshop's foundational years for handwrought serving pieces. Its clean profile and reliance on a single repeated structural element reflect the geometric restraint Spratling shared with Jean Puiforcat (Morrill, p. 224).
The design is unusually well documented, recorded in Mexican Silver: 20th Century Handwrought Jewelry & Metalwork by Morrill and Berk, in Spratling Silver, Centennial Edition by Sandraline Cederwall and Hal Riney, and in Morrill's Maestros de Plata.
That depth of literature, together with its early date, makes a surviving example a desirable piece of Spratling hollowware.
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