Small Spoon with Silver Bowl and Neck and with a Rosewood

This small spoon carries its silver where it is used, in the bowl and neck, while the handle is turned from rosewood and finished with an inset silver disc. The construction is a clear statement of Spratling's material logic: metal for the working surface, warm wood for the hand, and a single silver disc to tie the two together.

The silver-disc-on-wood detail is the same motif Spratling used across his objects of the period, a way of animating a plain wooden surface with a designed point of metal (Morrill, p. 73). On a serving spoon, the disc turns a utilitarian handle into a small composed object.

Flatware combining silver with rosewood belongs to the part of Spratling's output where he treated the table with the same material care he gave jewelry. A wood-handled spoon with an inset disc is a compact example of the contrast-of-materials approach that ran through his later work.