Flattened Ball Pie Server

A silver pie server finished with a flattened ball at the end of its handle, this First Design Period serving piece carries a motif Spratling extended into a coordinated table service: he also designed salad servers and at least one plate size using the same flattened-ball detail. The server is functional silver designed with the same care as his jewelry.

Flatware and holloware were a genuine part of Spratling's workshop production, hand-wrought to the same standard as the rest of his output (Morrill, Mexican Silver, 1994, pp. 53, 251). A pie server belongs to that program of fine table silver.

The flattened-ball terminal is a quiet, sculptural touch on an otherwise straightforward implement, the kind of simple resolved detail Spratling used to unify a service. That the same motif appears across servers and a plate shows him designing for the whole table rather than the single object.

The piece is recorded in the Spratling Silver Centennial Edition by Sandraline Cederwall and Hal Riney. Table silver survives in smaller numbers than his jewelry, so a documented First Period server is a useful example of his flatware design.