Box with Hinged Domed LID

A silver box whose hinged domed lid is pierced in the outline of a right hand, with a tortoise-shell hand set into the cutout, this piece turns the hand motif into the operating logic of the lid itself. The hand was a recurring image in Spratling's jewelry; here it becomes architecture, the shell inlay glowing through the silver cutout.

The pairing of silver with tortoise shell belongs to the "new gadgets" Spratling developed from the late 1940s, combinations of silver with shell and wood that marked his simpler, surface-led approach to form (Morrill, p. 73). The box's second design period date, 1949-1951, places it squarely in that experiment.

The design is recorded in both Morrill's Maestros de Plata and Goddard's Spratling Silver: A Field Guide. Boxes combining the hand motif with tortoise-shell inlay are seldom seen.