Child's Spoon with Pierced Design

A pierced design opens up the bowl of this lightweight child's spoon, part of a set, the cutwork giving a small object both decoration and lightness. The calado, or pierced silverwork, was a recognized Taxco technique, and Spratling used it across his tableware.

A drawing of a similar design survives in the William Spratling Folio of Drawings, placing the model within his documented design process. The piece belongs to a three-piece children's set whose 1958-59 catalog price was $16.00, rising to $17.60 by 1967.

The spoon is recorded in Cederwall and Riney's Spratling Silver, Littleton's The Color of Silver, and Goddard's field guide, and the design has been reissued. Original-period children's sets come to market only occasionally.