Plain Silver Cocktail Cup

Spratling called this plain silver cocktail cup a "plain water or julep cup," a vessel that makes its case entirely through proportion and the quality of the silver. The design was included in the 1965 traveling U.S. museum exhibit "The World of William Spratling," placing it among the work shown to American audiences as representative of the maker.

The restraint is the point: an unornamented cup depends on the raising, the line of the rim, and the finish, with the maker's own descriptive language tying it to everyday use. Plain drinking vessels were part of the workshop's broad holloware line.

That this simple cup traveled in a museum exhibition speaks to how Spratling's table silver was received, and documented examples are collected alongside his jewelry as part of that holloware output.