Four Legged Silver Ashtray

The four legs of this small ashtray each carry a single incised horizontal line, a detail that matters because the object can be matched directly to Spratling's own drawing of it in the Folio of Designs, an unusually exact correspondence. As the existing record notes, the silver objects in his surviving drawings are rarely the final rendition that was actually produced, which makes this faithful execution notable.

The ashtray is one of the designs Spratling created to be produced by Conquistador, the short-lived relationship that ran from 1949 to 1952 and defines his Second Design Period. While he continued to make many Conquistador designs at his ranch through the mid-1950s and into 1967, this one was made for fewer than three years.

Its pared, sculptural simplicity, the dish reduced to clean line and the legs to a single incision, reflects the direction Morrill identifies in Spratling's mature objects, forms pared down to their simplest outline (Morrill, Mexican Silver, 1994, p. 73).

The piece is recorded in the William Spratling Folio of Drawings. Conquistador-period objects with so short a production run come to market only rarely.