Provincial Lidded Sugar Bowl

This lidded silver sugar bowl in the Provincial pattern, fitted with rosewood handles, belongs to one of Spratling's most distinguished serving designs. The complete coffee and tea service in this pattern is held in the collection of the Birmingham Museum of Art, and the design was included in the traveling exhibit The World of William Spratling, which toured the United States in 1965.

The Provincial pattern pairs a clean silver body with carved rosewood handles, the wood-and-silver contrast that defined Spratling's hollowware carried into a full coordinated service. The sugar bowl is one element of a tea-and-coffee set built to read as a unified design.

The pattern's standing is reflected in its record: the creamer-and-sugar pair was catalogued at $40.80 in 1958-59, rising to $76.00 by 1967, and the design was awarded a prize by the National Sindicate of Silver Manufacturers of Mexico. It is documented in Cederwall and Riney's Spratling Silver.

A museum-held, exhibited, and prize-winning pattern places this among the more historically weighted of Spratling's serving designs, and original Provincial pieces come to market only occasionally.