Overhanging Lid Rosewood Box

A rosewood box crowned by a heavy, overhanging silver lid is Spratling's material contrast pushed toward architecture: the dense wood body and the broad silver cap read as two distinct volumes locked together. The deliberate overhang of the lid gives the object weight and shadow, the warm rosewood set against bright metal in the manner that runs through his Third Period objects.

That union of rosewood with silver is the same combining of materials Morrill places at the center of Spratling's design alongside the modernist current he worked within (Morrill, p. 224).

The box is recorded in Goddard's field guide, wholesaled at $20 in a 1961 catalog and $24 in 1967, and was included in "The World of William Spratling," the exhibition that toured U.S. museums in 1965 (Morrill, p. 77). A clean original with intact rosewood and an early mark is the documented piece.