Bud Vase of Silver on a Rosewood Base

A bud vase Spratling himself called a "little vase," this piece raises a slender silver vessel on a rosewood base, pairing the reflective metal with the warm density of the wood in the material contrast that runs through his holloware. The base is not merely a stand but a structural and visual counterweight, the same logic he applied across his objects.

The vase appears to have been made only in the 1960s, with a wholesale price of $6.00 in the 1961 Spratling catalogue rising to $7.60 by 1967. It was included in "The World of William Spratling," the museum exhibition that toured the United States in 1965 (Morrill, p. 77), placing it among the objects by which his late holloware was publicly presented, and it has since been reissued.

Spratling, who founded the Taxco silver revival in 1931, designed small vessels for the home with the same care he gave jewelry, and a silver-on-rosewood bud vase is that attention applied to a domestic object. A form documented across his 1960s catalogs and carried into the 1965 touring exhibition sits among the recognized objects of his final period.