Beaded Salt Spoon

A salt spoon barely larger than a coin, its tapering handle studded with silver beads and two more set where handle meets bowl, shows Spratling applying his beadwork vocabulary at the smallest possible scale. The applied beads are a recurring Spratling device, and on an object this size they do all the decorative work.

The spoon was made for only a five-year window, between 1962 and 1967, and carried a modest 1967 catalogue price, marking it as one of the briefer entries in his flatware program. His table silver was hand-wrought in Taxco throughout (Morrill, p. 251). It is recorded in the Cederwall and Riney Spratling Silver and in Morrill and Berk's Mexican Silver.

The design has been reissued. As a small, short-run serving piece, the period salt spoon survives in limited numbers and is easily separated from the larger sets it once accompanied.