Incised Rosewood Salad Spoon

Carved from rosewood with wrapped-wire decoration, this salad serving spoon is the companion to the all-rosewood fork, the two together a service in which the wood carries the form and silver wire provides the line. It is recorded in the El Arte en la Vida Diaria exhibition catalogue.

The wrapped wire binding the carved handle is the kind of restrained metal accent Spratling set against warm wood throughout his table designs (Morrill, p. 224). Treating the spoon as a carved wooden object rather than a silver one shows the workshop's confidence in the material itself.

Serving pieces of this type belong to the salad servers shown in the 1965 "World of William Spratling" traveling exhibition (Morrill, p. 77).