Scalloped Tin and Glass Box

A box of tin and glass with a scalloped tin design and bracketed corners that secure the glass lid, this First Design Period object comes from a side of Spratling's workshop that is easy to overlook: its tinwork. The scalloped tin gives a humble material a decorative, crafted edge.

Tin was a real medium in Spratling's shop. Morrill records that his workshop produced candlesticks, picture and mirror frames, and other objects in tin under the tinsmith Don Isidro Mejia, part of Spratling's broader revival of Mexican folk crafts (Morrill, Mexican Silver, 1994, p. 36). A scalloped tin-and-glass box belongs squarely to that program.

The brackets that hold the glass lid are a practical, hand-formed solution, and the scalloping is a signature treatment of Spratling's tinwork. Together they turn an everyday material into a considered object.

Tin pieces survive in far smaller numbers than Spratling's silver and are less familiar to collectors, which makes a documented First Period tin-and-glass box a notable example of the workshop's folk-craft output.