Silver Casket Box

A casket-form box in silver, its hinged top and four sides each carrying applied diamond shapes, an applied tear or heart on the front diamond, and the whole standing on four ball feet with a circle handle to each side, this object shows the workshop applying its ornamental vocabulary to hollowware. The applied geometric motifs and ball feet are the same devices used across Spratling's table silver and jewelry, here organized over a small architectural form.

Such boxes were part of the First Design Period output, made when the Taxco taller was defining what Mexican modern silver could be. The hand-raising of the body and the soldering on of applied ornament reflect the workshop's hand-wrought methods.

Recorded in both the Morrill and Berk survey and Morrill's Maestros de Plata study, the box is a documented example of the workshop's First Period hollowware.

Los Angeles County Museum of ArtLos Angeles, California

Box (Caja), 1944-1946

Accession M.2015.190.5. Official museum record Photo: Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

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