Silver pap boats are small shallow vessels which look rather like a sauceboat without a handle or any feet.
We have often seen reference to them being made in the seventeenth century but have never seen an example in silver before the George 1 period (1714 -1726) in over 40 years. But what is a pap boat? There has been quite a lot of debate over the years about what their actual use is. There seems in most likelihood a multi-functional aspect to their usage. The word pap apparently is derived from Scandinavia where it mimicked the sound a baby made when it opens its mouth for food. Pap was often a mixture of bread, water and milk and various other ingredients and was essentially a precursor of today’s baby foods.
It was almost certainly used as well to administer medicines to the sick and the infirm as well as to feed infants. Their usage seems to be discontinued in the mid nineteenth century
