Slender Rosewood Salad Servers

Slender salad servers paired silver with the warmth of rosewood, the wood inlaid along the bottom of each handle with horizontal silver wires. The interest lies in that marriage of materials. Spratling repeatedly contrasted the reflective surface of silver with the color and density of woods like rosewood, an approach Morrill places alongside the French silversmith Puiforcat, whose tea and coffee services combined silver with rosewood and ivory in a similarly restrained, geometric idiom (Morrill, p. 224).

Servers of this kind belonged to Spratling's third design period, when his hollowware and table objects had matured into a recognizable house style. Salad servers were among the categories of his work shown in 1965 in "The World of William Spratling," the touring exhibition organized by the McNay Art Institute (Morrill, p. 77).

The inlaid silver wires turn a utilitarian object into a designed one, the line of metal reading against the grain of the wood. It is a quiet piece, and its appeal is in that economy.