LONDON, 1612, MAKER'S MARK THREE MULLETTS

This previously unrecorded basket is the second earliest known basket, the earliest being one of 1597 which was in the collection first of John Edward Taylor and later the celebrated collection of Lord Harris of Peckham. Despite surviving in such small numbers Philippa Glanville, in Silver in Tudor and Early Stuart England, London, 1990, p. 220, discusses the use of fruit dishes on the tables of the Tudor period. She notes that baskets were evidently part of the requisite inventory of plate to be found in wealth and aristocratic houses as shown by records relating to the plate of Earl of Derby, which list three such baskets being gilded in 1651. The next fully hallmarked basket recorded is one of 1641, from the Untermeyer Collection, which is now in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum, New York.