Long Tapered Silver Spoon

A long, tapering spoon handle broken by a pierced area at the neck shows Spratling treating flatware as an opportunity for restrained design, the cutout lightening the handle and catching light along its length. The piercing is the spoon's single decorative gesture, integral to the form rather than applied to it.

Spratling's flatware was hand-wrought in Taxco by techniques that changed little across his career (Morrill, p. 251), and a pierced handle reflects the bench skill that work demanded. The spoon is recorded in both the original and the Centennial Edition of Cederwall and Riney's Spratling Silver.

Flatware with integral pierced ornament survives alongside the plainer patterns, and the cutout at the neck marks this as a considered Spratling design rather than a stock pattern.