Sugar Spoon

Spratling called this small spoon a sugar spoon, and it gathers several of his signature flatware devices into one piece: wrapped silver wire, intertwined and incised loops, and silver balls. Wire wrapping in particular runs as a thread through his work, first documented around 1938 on a child's fork and revived in the early 1950s across jewelry, flatware, and objects.

The motif vocabulary here is not decorative filler but the working language of Spratling's later workshops, where wire pulled to gauge and beads made in quantity were standard stock for the smiths (Morrill, p. 36). This spoon reads as a compact anthology of those favorite elements.

Made for roughly a decade, about 1957 to 1967, the model is documented across the standard references, including Cederwall and Riney's Spratling Silver, its Centennial Edition, and Goddard's field guide, with catalog prices of $4.90 in 1958-59 and $6.00 by 1967.

The design, model CA-4, has been reissued and is available new, a sign of its lasting appeal. Original-period examples are the collectible interest.

The Wolfsonian-FIUMiami Beach, United States

Spoon

Accession XX1990.1276.2. Official museum record Photo: The Wolfsonian-FIU.

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