Ebony Box with Silver Dragonfly

An ebony box with a silver dragonfly set into a recessed oval in the lid pairs two of Spratling's signatures: the dark-wood-and-silver material contrast and the insect motif he carried across pins and boxes alike. Recessing the silver dragonfly into the ebony makes the lid a small framed composition rather than an applied ornament.

The dragonfly belongs to the same family of naturalistic Mexican subjects Spratling reduced to clean design, and the silver-on-dark-wood treatment is the playful, sophisticated interplay Morrill describes in his objects of this period (Morrill, p. 73).

The box is recorded in Goddard's field guide, wholesaled at $14 in a 1961 catalog, and was included in "The World of William Spratling," the exhibition that toured U.S. museums in 1965 drawing on Spratling's own collections alongside his silver (Morrill, p. 77). A clean original with intact ebony and a crisp inlay is the period piece.