Ashtray of Ebony with Silver Bowl

Four silver balls studding a field of dark ebony make this ashtray a clear example of the dotted vocabulary Spratling worked through in his later years. The silver bowl sits within the wood, while the applied balls turn the ebony surface into a composition of metal points on a dark ground.

The device is one Morrill identifies directly with Spratling's 1950s production: silver dots on wood was a motif he "used extensively in this period," lending his objects "a sense of playfulness and sophistication" (Morrill, p. 73). This third-period ashtray puts that idea to work on a functional object.

The contrast of bright silver against the deep grain of ebony gives the piece its quiet appeal, the regularity of the four balls imposing order on the dark surface. It is the same impulse that runs through his dotted boxes and bracelets of the same years.

As a third-period ebony-and-silver object it sits among the mature holloware in which Spratling's dot motif came fully into its own.