Salad Fork

Even a salad fork could carry one of Spratling's signature motifs, and this one does so in gold: a disc pattern with applied circular gold buttons set against the silver. The applied disc is the same compositional unit that runs through his jewelry and holloware, here translated into a precious-metal accent on a serving piece.

Gold was an occasional luxury note in Spratling's flatware, and its use here lifts an ordinary form into something more deliberate. The catalogue record fixes the piece in the studio's late production: a 1961 catalog lists the wholesale price at $14, and the 1967 catalog at $18.40.

Spratling's flatware was hand-wrought throughout, made to standards the Sucesores later maintained largely unchanged (Morrill, p. 251). The disc-and-button vocabulary that defines this fork ties it to the broader pattern language Spratling carried across forms.

The fork is recorded in Cederwall and Riney's Spratling Silver. As a documented gold-accented serving piece it sits at the more elaborate end of his table line.