Supper Candlestick

A silver taper stick, called a "supper" candlestick in the catalogue, set midway up its stem with a rosewood circle inset with silver buttons, this piece brings Spratling's wood-and-silver vocabulary to a lighting object. The dark wood ring interrupts the silver stem, and the inset silver buttons turn that interruption into a deliberate decorative band.

The device of silver buttons set into wood belongs to Spratling's third-period language, where applied silver gave his wooden elements rhythm and refinement (Morrill, p. 73). On a candlestick, the wood ring also breaks up the vertical line and gives the eye a point of rest.

Its catalog history is recorded: the wholesale price was $20.80 in 1958-59 and $24.80 in 1967. The taper stick was included in "The World of William Spratling," the exhibition that traveled the U.S. in 1965, and is recorded in Cederwall and Riney's Spratling Silver and in Phyllis Goddard's Spratling Silver: A Field Guide.

With that exhibition history, catalog record, and literature, it is a well-anchored example of Spratling's mature wood-and-silver lighting, which comes to market only occasionally.