Pepper Shaker

A square block of rosewood inset with a silver circle and capped by a silver top, this pepper shaker shows Spratling carrying the silver-on-wood pairing from his jewelry into the table. The motif of silver dots and circles on wood was one he used extensively, a device Morrill notes recurring across his pieces of the period (Morrill, Mexican Silver, 1994, p. 73).

Reducing a useful object to a clean rosewood block with a single silver inset reflects the pared, sophisticated simplicity Morrill identifies in his mature work (Morrill, p. 73). The warm wood against the bright metal does the entire job of the design.

The shaker is recorded in Morrill and Berk's Mexican Silver: 20th Century Handwrought Jewelry & Metalwork. Functional silver-and-wood objects of this kind surface less often than his jewelry.