Antique Silver Baskets
Open silver and plated serving vessels, pierced or built from wire, made to carry bread, fruit, cake, sweets or sugar to the table.
Antique Silver Baskets
The form the market turns on is a pierced basket with a swing handle, round or oval, Victorian or Edwardian, in sterling or in plate. Victorian is the commonest label in titles and Edwardian the next, so that pairing accounts for a large part of what comes up on Sellingantiques.
Function words split the group further. Sugar, bread and fruit are the three commonest labels, with cake and bonbon behind them. Sugar and bonbon baskets are the small end, a few inches across on a foot, sometimes fitted with a coloured glass liner. Bread and fruit baskets are the larger swing-handled pieces, and a handful of centrepiece and epergne forms run bigger again.
About a fifth of listings are plated rather than solid, and Old Sheffield plate sits as its own family alongside later electroplate, often in wirework. Pierced and wirework baskets became standard English table silver in the 18th century; plate later put the same shapes on a great many more tables. Dutch, German, Polish, Irish, Scottish, French and American pieces all turn up, so this is not a purely English category.
The word basket is used broadly in titles, and many pieces are also called a dish or a bowl. There is a small persistent tail of things that are basket-shaped without being serving vessels: basket pin cushions run to thirteen titles, and single entries cover a table lighter, a stamp case, an egg cruet and a jewellery box.
Where The Range Splits
Metal does most of the work. Hallmarked sterling clusters in the upper part of the range and plated pieces concentrate low, with the highest sampled examples all solid silver. Date pushes the same way: the Georgian and 18th-century entries sit at the top, while Victorian and Edwardian plate sits at the bottom. Those early pieces are a minority, forty Georgian and nineteen 18th Century against ninety-one Victorian.
Size and stated weight track the range closely. Titles quote diameters from six inches to fifty-three centimetres and weights from about seventy grams for a small cream pail to over nineteen hundred grams, and the biggest numbers belong to the biggest prices. Elaboration counts too, with fretwork, intricate wickerwork and epergne construction described at the top and plain sheet forms below.
Naming and completeness separate the rest. Upper-range listings routinely give a maker and an assay town, Sheffield, London, Chester, Dublin or Newcastle among them, while the cheapest read simply as a silver plated basket. Original liners, matching sifter spoons and serving forks, fitted cases, and pairs or sets all belong to the stronger end; one in sixteen listings is a pair or a set.
Antique Silver Baskets Retail Price Guide 2026
Typical UK retail prices for silver baskets, calculated from the Sellingantiques database of over a million retail prices indexed since 2003. This retail price guide relies exclusively on Sellingantiques data; no external sources or auction records are used, so the figures do not describe the wider market.
Victorian is the period label used most on Sellingantiques for silver baskets, with Edwardian next and the 1900s third.
James Dixon & Sons·William Hutton & Sons·Martin Hall & Co
The Antique Silver Baskets Glossary
- Swing handle
- A hinged carrying handle that folds flat to either side. Fifty-six titles name one, and it is the defining feature of the bread and fruit basket.
- Pierced
- Openwork cut or stamped through the body, sometimes called reticulated. The word appears in forty-nine titles and covers everything from simple slots to full fretwork panels.
- Liner
- A separate glass or gilt insert that holds the contents. Thirty-three titles mention one; blue, Bristol blue, cranberry, ruby, amethyst, vaseline, opaline, frosted and rock crystal all appear, and only some are described as original.
- Old Sheffield plate
- Silver fused to copper, made before electroplating. It recurs as a distinct family from later plated wares, often in wirework.
- Wirework
- A body built from drawn silver or plated wire rather than sheet. Named in seventeen titles, and the one feature that spans the whole date range, from 18th-century Old Sheffield plate to Edwardian hallmarked sugar baskets.
- Boat shape
- An elongated pointed oval, also called navette, used for Georgian-style sugar baskets and their later copies.
Antique Silver Baskets: Frequently Asked Questions
Are most silver baskets Georgian?
No. Victorian and Edwardian listings lead by a wide margin, with the 1900s, 1910s and 1920s buckets behind them.
Georgian and 18th-century pieces are a real but minority presence, forty and nineteen listings respectively. They cluster at the top of the range, and include a five-basket epergne dated 1765 that stands alone in the Sellingantiques archive.
What is the difference between sterling and plated baskets?
Sterling is hallmarked silver; plate is silver over a base metal. About a fifth of listings are described as plated, and a similar share again as sterling or solid.
Old Sheffield plate, silver fused to copper, is treated as its own family in titles and is separate from later electroplate. Sterling pieces sit in the upper part of the range and plated ones lower.
Do sugar baskets always have a glass liner?
Only thirty-three titles name a liner at all, so it is a feature of some baskets rather than a rule.
Where liners do appear, the colours run through blue, Bristol blue, cranberry, ruby, amethyst, vaseline, opaline, frosted and rock crystal. Some titles say the liner is original; many simply say a liner is present.
Which assay towns turn up most often?
Sheffield leads with forty mentions in titles, then London with twenty-six and Chester with fourteen.
Birmingham, Dublin, Newcastle, Edinburgh and Glasgow all appear too, though the Irish and Scottish marks surface only once or twice. Dutch, Polish and Austro-Hungarian entries are the rarest origins recorded.
How often do these come up for sale?
Around fifty-three baskets are listed on Sellingantiques in a year, spread across a great many dealers.
Seventy-nine different dealers have handled one, which makes it a form almost any general silver dealer will carry at some point rather than a specialism.
Why are some baskets called dishes or bowls?
The word basket is used loosely in dealer titles, and plenty of pieces carry two descriptions in the same line.
There is also a tail of objects that are basket-shaped without serving food: thirteen basket pin cushions, plus single entries for a table lighter, a stamp case, an egg cruet, a jewellery box and a liqueur stand.