Two Step Candlestick

An early turned silver candlestick rising from a two-step square platform, this piece shows Spratling carrying the discipline of his jewelry into hollowware during his first design period. The turned column and the stepped square base are both architectural forms, and the candlestick reads as a small piece of built structure rather than ornament.

The stepped platform is the telling detail. The step is a motif drawn from Mexico's pre-Columbian architecture, which the Taxco workshop translated into accessible modern forms across its production (Stromberg, p. 27). Here it grounds the turned stem and gives the object its quiet monumentality.

Early Spratling candlesticks of this kind come to market only occasionally and reward attention to the geometry of the base, which carries the design's first-period sensibility.