Ellenor Alcorn notes in her publication Beyond the Maker's Mark, Paul de Lamerie Silver in the Cahn Collection, Cambridge, 2006, p. 106 that baskets must have been a speciality of de Lamerie's business, forming a large part of his production as proportionately many survive. They range from the early examples, which imitate basket weave and are unadorned with figurative ornament, to examples from the high Rococo period, such as the basket offered here, which displays the skill for which Lamerie's workshop was celebrated. The feet, borders and handle are embellished with floral and figurative castings with finely chased detail.

The present basket is noteworthy for its bearded male masks feet, thought perhaps to be a reference to the medieval mythical figure of the Green Man or Wodewose. They also appear on another basket dated 1741 in the Cahn collection, Alcorn, op. cit., pp. 97-98, no. 37. Alcorn cites a number of other baskets which feature the same castings for the feet. The handle of the Rudge basket is formed from demi-putti who glance to the side. This form is also seen on a basket in the Cahn collection, Alcorn, op. cit., pp. 109-110, no. 42, which is similarly finely pierced with shells, scrolls and flowers. It was made for Henry Issac, a Dutch born London based Jewish diamond merchant.

Paul de Lamerie is rightly seen as the greatest silversmith working in Britain in the 18th century; his works having been not only prized above all others but also inspired generations of silversmiths. Lamerie was of French Huguenot parentage. He was apprenticed to the fellow Huguenot, Pierre Platel, of Pall Mall in 1703, becoming free of his master in 1711. Within six years he was being described as 'the King's Silversmith'. He was admitted into the Livery of the Company in 1717. During his long career Lamerie supplied many of the powerful aristocrats of the time but the international nature of London and the wealth of its merchant class is attested by the many commissions he received from rich London based traders.

His work was the subject of a monograph by P. A. S. Phillips published in 1935 and a ground-breaking exhibition dedicated to his work at the Goldsmiths' Hall, London in 1990. The research for the 1990 exhibition catalogue and subsequent work by Ellenor Alcorn, late of the Metropolitan Museum, New York and now Chair and Curator of European Decorative Arts at the Art Institute of Chicago, the art historian and silversmith Ubaldo Vitali and the author and art historian Maureen Cassidy-Geiger for the Cahn Collection catalogue, op. cit., and many others has resulted in a wealth of information and analysis of the master and his work.