Ebony and Twisted Silver Letter Opener

A letter opener with an ebony handle wrapped in silver wire and topped by a silver arrowhead blade descends directly from Spratling's 1949 Alaska project, where he created some two hundred models for an Indigenous crafts industry. His own description of the 1949 model, a primitive spearhead with a spiral column in silver, is the design's source.

Morrill records that Spratling's Alaska models included letter openers, one with a silver blade and a handle shaped to its material, drawing on native Alaskan substances like ivory and baleen (Morrill, p. 66). Translated back into his Taxco line in ebony and silver, the spearhead opener carried a late-1950s catalogue price and another in 1967. It is recorded in the Cederwall and Riney Spratling Silver, in Morrill's Maestros de Plata, and in Goddard's field guide.

The original design has been reissued, which makes period examples the collectible ones. Objects that trace directly to the documented Alaska models occupy a distinctive corner of Spratling's work.