Large Gallery Tray

Weight and silence carry this large tray: a plain silver field, a raised gallery, and a rolled rim, with no applied ornament at all. The restraint is the point. By the third design period, 1951-1967, Spratling had pared his hollowware toward pure form and surface, an approach close to the unornamented purity he admired in Jean Puiforcat (Morrill, p. 224).

Trays were a staple of the workshop's table production and appeared among the silver shown in "The World of William Spratling," the 1965 touring exhibition (Morrill, p. 77). The very heaviness of this example speaks to the solid gauge Spratling's shop used.

Large plain trays of this date survive in modest numbers.