Rounded Tea Strainer with Pierced Design

A rounded tea strainer with a pierced design and cut-out handles, this small object turns a functional implement into an exercise in calado, the pierced silverwork that was a recognized Taxco technique. It dates to the First Design Period of 1931 to 1946.

The piercing serves the strainer's function and its decoration at once, the cutwork opening the bowl while patterning it. Spratling used calado across his tableware, and on a strainer the technique is both practical and ornamental.

The piece is recorded in the Centennial Edition of Cederwall and Riney's Spratling Silver. Early pierced tea accessories from the founding decade come to market only occasionally.