Stemmed Cocktail Goblet with Ball Studded Spiral Stem

This stemmed cocktail goblet turns its function into ornament through a spiral stem studded with applied silver balls, a worked column that lifts the bowl and gives the eye a rhythm to follow. The applied-bead detail, used across Spratling's link jewelry of the same years, here animates a piece of holloware, the spiral and the studs together making the stem the focus of the design.

The goblet dates to Spratling's Third Design Period, 1951 to 1967, and was included in "The World of William Spratling," the museum exhibition that toured the United States in 1965 (Morrill, p. 77). Champagne cups were made in the same design, so the goblet belongs to a coordinated set of drinking vessels rather than a single form.

The piece is recorded in the literature, appearing in Cederwall and Riney's Spratling Silver, in Morrill and Berk's Mexican Silver, and in La Plateria Mexicana, an unusually broad documentary footprint that reflects its standing among his holloware.

Spratling, who founded the Taxco revival in 1931, designed barware and table silver with the same sculptural attention he gave jewelry, and a ball-studded spiral stem is that attention applied to a cocktail goblet. A form carried into the 1965 touring exhibition sits among the objects by which his holloware was publicly defined.