Square Based Liqueur Cup

Raised on a square silver base, this liqueur cup shows Spratling working in hollowware with the same geometric discipline he brought to jewelry. The cup is a small, balanced exercise in form: a simple vessel lifted on a squared plinth, the kind of restrained tableware that aligns Spratling with the purity of form he admired in Jean Puiforcat (Morrill, p. 224).

The design had a second life at larger scale. With a slightly later hallmark, the same model was made at 11 1/2 inches and used as a tennis trophy, a reminder that Spratling's table forms were elastic enough to serve as presentation pieces.

The cup belongs to the first design period, 1931-1946, the foundational years of the workshop's hollowware. It is recorded in Mexican Silver: 20th Century Handwrought Jewelry & Metalwork by Penny C. Morrill and Carole A. Berk.

Small hollowware from this early period survives in limited numbers and reaches collectors only occasionally.