Jaguar Coffee and Tea Service

The complete jaguar coffee and tea service is the fullest statement of Spratling's most celebrated holloware design: coffee pots in two sizes, a teapot, and lidded sugar and creamer, all with ebony handles and small jaguar finials, the cat carried from vessel to vessel as a unifying motif. The sugar and creamer were also made with plain round silver finials in place of the jaguars.

The jaguar belongs to Spratling's foundational turn toward Pre-Columbian sources, the strategy that distinguished his silver from the European and Colonial models traditional in Mexico (Morrill, p. 39). Coffee and tea services in this vein were part of the documented output shown at the 1965 McNay exhibition (Morrill, p. 77).

The service is recorded in Phyllis Goddard's Spratling Silver field guide.