Although silver baskets are known from the late sixteenth century it was not really until the 1730s that the cake or breadbasket starts to make its appearance and slightly later to this a much smaller sweet or bonbon basket started to become popular.
The earliest baskets are generally magnificent creations of rococo silverware with, and it should be noted that virtually all eighteenth-century baskets have handles to make it easier for the butler to serve. By the 1770s both the cake and the smaller sweet baskets are fashioned in a lighter form often using neo-classical motifs and fine engraving but in 1790’s the baskets are often much plainer and by the early part of the nineteenth century baskets are now being made more commonly in a rectangular shape either quite plain or with decorative ornament.
William Walter Antiques we have a very fine selection of the earliest baskets by such famous silversmiths as Edward Aldridge, Samuel Herbert, and the Bateman family right up to baskets of the modern era which often copy earlier styles.
The earliest bowls in our collection are twin handled vessels known as porringers which were popular from the Cromwellian period (c1650) right up to the middle eighteenth century and used for oatmeal. Unusual bowls from the seventeenth century and early eighteenth centuries with single pierced handles sometimes called bleeding bowls and occasionally porringers which by the Victorian period had changed purpose and were used as christening bowls.
We have a fine selection of rose bowls, punch bowls and large bowls suitable for use as fruit bowls or wine coolers or just to make an impressive decorative statement. We have bowls and porringers from the early Charles II right up to the modern era from the plainest styles to the highly decorative and in a vast array of shapes and sizes. Including bowls by some of the most important makers of the nineteenth century such as the Barnard family, Charles Stuart Harris, Horace Woodward, and Elkington struck with assay marks from all the major silversmithing centres of the UK including Scotland and Ireland.
