LONDON, 1612, MAKER'S MARK THREE MULLETS

This basket was unrecorded before its appearance on the market in recent years. It is thought to be the third earliest known basket, predated by one of 1597 from the collection of John Edward Taylor (1830-1905), later in the collection of Lord Harris of Peckham and a second of 1602, cited by Michael Clayton in The Collector's Dictionary of the Silver and Gold of Great Britain and North America, Woodbridge, 1985, p. 25. Despite surviving in such small numbers Philippa Glanville, in Silver in Tudor and Early Stuart England, London, 1990, p. 220, notes that baskets were evidently part of the requisite inventory of plate to be found in wealthy and aristocratic houses, as shown by records relating to the plate of Earl of Derby, which list three such baskets being gilded in 1651. Contemporary paintings record the use of similar wicker and porcelain baskets for the display of fruit. A similar but somewhat later silver basket was painted by a follower of the French artist Andre Bouys (1657-1740) at the end of the 17th century. 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, illustrated by Glanville, op. cit., p. 221, fig 117. The rarity of the present basket was no doubt recognised by the 19th century silversmiths Charles and George Fox, who produced replicas of the current basket in 1848, now in private collections.