Pyramid Base Tin Candlestick

A pyramid-shaped base, a doughnut-form bobeche, and a narrow cylinder above stack this tall tin candlestick into a frankly architectural object, its triangular faces impressed with circles and diagonal lines. The geometry is the ornament; the worked surface does the rest.

Tinwork of this kind was produced in Spratling's workshop alongside his silver, where a tinsmith directed assistants in making candlesticks and frames at La Aduana (Morrill, p. 36). The stepped, pyramidal massing echoes the Pre-Columbian forms that ran through his broader design vocabulary.

The candlestick is recorded in Penny Morrill's Maestros de Plata and Phyllis Goddard's Spratling Silver field guide.