Aztec Double Serpents Box

Aztec double serpents worked in silver across the lid of a rosewood box bring one of Spratling's most resonant pre-Columbian subjects onto a domestic object. Morrill reads the double serpent as an allusion to Mexico's past in which the snakes are flattened and stylized so that what registers is the pattern of the form rather than the power of Quetzalcoatl, the emphasis falling on the textural interplay of silver against a darker ground (Morrill, p. 73).

On this Third Period box that darker ground is rosewood, the warm wood setting off the bright serpents in the same play of materials Spratling pursued in his 1950s objects. The serpent design recurs across his work, appearing on box lids in both silver and rosewood.

The box is recorded in Goddard's field guide and in the catalog of El Arte en la Vida Diaria, the exhibition of well-designed objects made in Mexico. A clean original read by its hallmark anchors a much-used motif to a documented form.