Three Ball Salt Dish

A small silver salt dish, possibly a master salt, ringed at its top edge with three applied silver balls. The form is plain and the ornament minimal, which is itself the point: Spratling's table silver often relied on a single repeated element to give a simple vessel its character, here the rhythm of beads around the rim.

Objects of this scale belonged to the broad range of hollowware that came out of Spratling's workshop alongside the jewelry for which he is better known. Salts, ashtrays, trays, and serving pieces were all part of the production, hand-wrought at Las Delicias.

With no recorded reference and little beyond the form itself, the dish is best read as a modest, well-made example of the everyday silver Spratling produced. Pieces this small survive less often than the showier jewelry, which gives them a quiet scarcity.