Flared Silver Salt Dish

A classic flared salt dish raised on a square silver base, this piece sets a curving bowl against a geometric foot, a small study in the contrast between flared and rectilinear form. The design is pure silver, its interest in the proportion of bowl to base rather than in any applied ornament, the kind of restrained table object Spratling made well.

The salt carries a concrete commercial record: it was offered in the 1943 Montgomery Ward Christmas Book at $4.75 including a salt spoon. That listing places it within Spratling's wartime arrangement with Montgomery Ward, when his handwrought silver reached a national mail-order audience (Morrill, p. 53), and the bundled spoon documents how the dish was sold as a small service.

A flared salt from the Montgomery Ward years is a tangible record of how broadly Spratling's table silver circulated during the war. The catalog listing makes it one of the better-documented small holloware forms of that period, anchored to a date and a price.