Heavy, Nicely Balanced Cheese Knife

Wire wrapping was one of Spratling's recurring design elements, and this heavy, well-balanced cheese knife puts it to work on the silver handle, the coiled wire giving both grip and ornament.

The knife belongs to the Amarres flatware pattern, listed in the December 1945 wholesale catalog, placing it in the late First Design Period when the workshop was producing flatware as a serious line alongside its jewelry. Hand-wrought flatware of this kind was made by techniques Morrill records as changing little across the decades (Morrill, p. 251).

The balance noted in its making is not incidental; a carving or cheese knife had to perform, and the wire-wrapped handle answers function as much as style. The piece is documented in Phyllis M. Goddard's Spratling Silver: A Field Guide.