Covered Sugar and Cream Pitcher in the Jaguar Pattern

A covered sugar and cream service in the Jaguar pattern, with ebony handles and jaguar finials, this is Spratling holloware at its most characterful, applying his Mexican iconography to functional tableware. The same design was also produced with plain hollow silver balls in place of the jaguar finials, so the service exists in both a figural and a restrained version.

Spratling's workshop produced flatware and holloware alongside its jewelry, all hand-wrought to the same standard (Morrill, Mexican Silver, 1994, pp. 53, 251). A covered sugar and creamer was part of that table-service production, and the Jaguar pattern brought a Pre-Columbian animal into a domestic European form.

The pairing of ebony handles with silver follows Spratling's taste for combining the metal with a contrasting dark material, the same instinct that runs through his wood-and-silver work of the period (Morrill, p. 73). The ebony keeps the handles cool to the touch and sets off the bright silver of the bodies.

A two-piece sugar and cream set in a named figural pattern is a substantial example of Spratling's holloware. Such table pieces survive in smaller numbers than his jewelry and come to market only occasionally.