Wide Oval Serving Spoon

What sets this large serving spoon apart is that its design survives in Spratling's own hand: the drawing for it is included in his Folio of Designs. The wide oval bowl is balanced by a handle of two striated silver bands that terminate in scrolls at both the neck and the base, a fully resolved sculptural idea carried into a functional object.

The scroll and the striated band are part of Spratling's holloware and flatware vocabulary, and the survival of the preparatory drawing makes this an unusually well-documented design, letting the finished spoon be read directly against the maker's intent. The doubled bands give the handle weight and structure while the scrolls soften its terminals.

Spratling's serving pieces were hand-wrought to the same standard as his jewelry, and a design preserved in his Folio carries particular evidentiary value within his output.

The spoon is recorded in William Spratling: Folio of Drawings and in Goddard's Spratling Silver: A Field Guide. A piece documented both as a drawing and as an object is a relatively scarce thing in his catalogue.