Rope Trimmed Shot Cup

A band of twisted rope encircling the body of this small silver cup is the single decorative gesture, and it is enough: the cord motif draws on the braided forms Spratling adapted from local craft and Pre-Columbian sources and translated into a clean, usable object. The form is a shot cup, hand-raised in sterling, its plain walls relieved only by that turned ribbon at the center.

The piece belongs to Spratling's First Design Period, 1931 to 1946, the years in which the Taxco workshop he founded established the template for modern Mexican silver: hand-wrought hollowware in which a single Mexican-derived ornament animates an otherwise austere surface. Hollowware like this was produced alongside the jewelry as part of a full table-and-bar repertoire.

The cup is recorded in Frances Toor's Guide to Mexico, placing it among the objects circulated to the tourist and collector market of the period. Such small, well-documented hollowware survives less often than the jewelry and is sought by collectors of early Spratling.