Triangular Silver Pill Box

A flat triangular pill box topped with an applied silver circle, fitted with an internal silver wheel that dispenses the pills. The appeal is in the engineering as much as the form: the geometry of triangle and circle is pure Spratling, while the working wheel mechanism turns a small object into a piece of designed function. It is recorded in Phyllis Goddard's field guide, "Spratling Silver: Recognizing a William Spratling Treasure."

Geometric reduction of this kind ran through Spratling's work from the early years, when his designs took shape around clean silhouettes and a controlled vocabulary of forms. The pill box is a small, portable expression of that sensibility.

Utilitarian silver objects like this one came out of the same workshop as the jewelry and hollowware, and they share its discipline of line. Their compactness has also made them easy to lose, so intact examples with a functioning mechanism are the ones collectors look for.