Three Tab Silver Bowl

Spare in profile, this wide shallow bowl gains its accent from three silver tabs set with amethyst cabochons rising from the rim. The amethyst, a stone Spratling used repeatedly across his work, supplies the only color against an otherwise plain expanse of silver.

The design is a variant within his holloware: it follows an earlier bowl form but drops the wide rim around the top perimeter, so the eye goes straight to the cabochon-set tabs. That kind of measured variation, keeping a form and changing one element, is typical of how Spratling developed his catalogue.

Amethyst against silver was a favored Spratling pairing, and here it is used sparingly, three points of violet stone punctuating an austere first-period bowl. As a documented design variant in mixed materials it belongs to the studio's domestic holloware and is seen only occasionally at auction.