Silver baskets such as this for holding cake or bread were first made in the sixteenth century. They were given their most imaginative treatment in the eighteenth century by silversmiths such as Paul de Lamerie, head of one of the most celebrated English silver workshops of the day, which produced numerous baskets of various shapes between 1724 and 1751. This example belongs to a group of silver objects, bearing Lamerie's mark and dating from about 1737 to about 1745, that are boldly sculptural in style and that may be the work of an unidentified modeler working for Lamerie, perhaps continental in origin. Several of the decorative elements on this basket, including the scallop-shell shape, mermaid handle, and dolphin supports, were derived from sixteenth- and seventeenth-century silver. The form of this basket proved very popular, and was copied by other English silversmiths both before and after Lamerie's death. Donna Corbin, from Philadelphia Museum of Art: Handbook of the Collections (1995), p. 139.