Lattice Silver Barrel Box

A grid of incised diamonds wraps the whole rounded body of this barrel-form box, each crossing pinned with a small gold bead, the pattern carried unbroken up and over the domed hinged lid. The effect is tufted upholstery translated into metal, a buttoned cushion rendered in heavy hand-worked silver. It is a witty, sophisticated conceit, and a good example of the decorative holloware that came out of the William Spratling workshop.

The charm is in the discipline of the repeat. The diamonds are scored cleanly into the bright surface, and the gold beads sit at every intersection so that warm points of light run in regular rows against the cool silver. Curving the grid over the barrel back and the domed lid, rather than working a flat panel, lets the quilting read as something soft and pillowed even though it is rigid metal.

The box is sterling, stamped WS with the eagle assay mark of the later years of the Taxco taller Spratling founded, when his holloware paired sterling bodies with applied gold detail. It opens on a hinge running the length of the back and rests on small gold ball feet, the same beads that stud the lattice carried down to lift the body off the surface.

Beside the jewelry that carries his name, Spratling kept up a line of holloware and small objects like this, and the lattice box shows that side of the workshop at its most playful: a plain useful form dressed in a single repeated idea, in silver and gold.

Los Angeles County Museum of ArtLos Angeles, California

Box (Caja), 1951-1967

Accession M.2015.190.7. Official museum record Photo: Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

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