Dutch silver sweetmeat basket

A Dutch silver sweetmeat basket

Alger Mensma

Amsterdam, 1722

185 grams; 13 x 10 x7 cm

The sweetmeat basket is manufactured in the form of an oval glass cooler (monteith), with scalloped edge, on which hinged openwork handles are hung on both sides. The body has a profiled border all around and is raised on an oval slightly domed base. Fully marked on the reverse of the body and displaying an assay stripe.

The sweetmeat basket can be seen as an early object made by Alger Mensma. It is also one of the earliest of its kind. Most of the ones that followed were made around 1730. The early sweetmeat baskets are in the form of a plain glass/wine cooler. Sweetmeat baskets have been recorded in Hague inventory lists as confituren koelbakje or thee koelvat, intended for preservatives or candy sugar.

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