Flat Box with Diamond Pattern and Studded with Gold Beads

A flat silver box worked in a diamond pattern and studded with gold beads, this object marries the workshop's geometric surface vocabulary with the warmth of gold accents. It was made in several sizes and dates to the Third Design Period of 1951 to 1967; a 1961 Spratling catalogue lists a wholesale price for the form, and the design was later reissued.

The piece carries the standing of having been included in the 1965 traveling exhibition "The World of William Spratling," which toured United States museums and whose published silver inventory included cigarette boxes and similar objects (Morrill, p. 77). A box carried into that show belongs to the recognized later repertoire.

Recorded in the Cederwall and Riney Spratling Silver volume, and reissued under the hand-wrought program that has carried the workshop's designs forward (Morrill, p. 251), it is a documented example of Spratling's late hollowware.