Wrapped Wire Pepper Shaker

A wrapped silver wire band applied around its body gives this pepper shaker, called a "caster" in Spratling's own catalog, its only ornament, the worked wire turning a plain vessel into a designed object. The device of applied silver wire belongs to the textural surface treatments Spratling favored.

Reducing a functional caster to a clean form lifted by a single band of worked wire reflects the pared simplicity Morrill identifies in his mature objects, forms pared to their outline and given richness through surface (Morrill, Mexican Silver, 1994, p. 73). The piece has since been reissued.

The shaker is recorded in Morrill and Berk's Mexican Silver: 20th Century Handwrought Jewelry & Metalwork. Spratling table silver comes to market less often than his jewelry.