Disco Steak Knife

A shaped rosewood handle with a carved loop at its base, wrapped in silver wire and set with inlaid silver discs, gives this Disco steak knife the same material logic Spratling brought to his jewelry, wood and silver played against each other in a useful object. The pattern of silver dots on wood was one he used extensively, a motif Morrill notes recurring across his pieces of this era (Morrill, Mexican Silver, 1994, p. 73).

The knife is one of the designs traceable to his own hand: a very similar knife appears in the William Spratling Folio of Drawings. It was also made in ebony, the alternative dark wood the workshop kept for such pieces. The wholesale price in a 1961 Spratling catalog was $5.20, and the design ran from 1958 until 1967, spanning much of his late production.

The knife is recorded in Goddard's Spratling Silver: A Field Guide. Spratling flatware of this kind, with documented catalog pricing and a surviving design drawing, is well anchored in the record.