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The jaguar teapot is one of Spratling's most recognizable designs, a service vessel that takes its form from a Pre-Columbian animal rather than a European silver model. Worked in silver with ebony for the handle, it carries the cat as both motif and structure, the animal giving the pot its profile.
Turning to Mexico's ancient heritage for inspiration was the core of Spratling's revolution in silver: he drew on Pre-Conquest art and Pre-Columbian sources to affirm, as Diego Rivera had, the greatness of that heritage (Morrill, p. 39). The jaguar is among the most direct expressions of that program in his holloware.
Coffee and tea services were a documented part of his output, included in the 1965 McNay exhibition of his work (Morrill, p. 77).
The teapot is recorded in the Cederwall and Riney Spratling Silver volumes, La Platería Mexicana, and Penny Morrill's Maestros de Plata, the references that anchor his holloware.
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