This form has commonly been called a fruit basket, and it was likely used for that purpose. Tucker’s monochrome pattern book indicates that the form came in two models and two sizes. This pair represents the smaller size, no. 17, which has a slightly simpler design in the upper section of the basket work. “$3.00 each” is written at the bottom of the drawing in the pattern book. The same form appears in the polychrome pattern book as nos. 62 and 65. While Thomas Tucker's price list includes “Fruit Baskets,” which sold at $2.00 each, that reference is clearly to the flat-bottomed basket form that appears in the monochrome pattern book as no. 16, with a price noted as $2.00 each. Moreover, the list also includes something called “high Comporteers,” which sold at $2.50 each, the most expensive price on the list and the closest to that noted on the drawing. As a result it is almost certain that the term "high comporteers” refers to this type of basket raised on a compote-like base. Related examples that have survived along with large tea and coffee services with matching ornament suggest that the form was intended to be used in that context.

Related Examples: A pair of the same small size, Chester County Historical Society, West Chester, Pennsylvania (Tucker 1957, nos. 407–8); a larger 11-inch model, no. 15, made for Anne Tucker and part of her gold and white tea and coffee service at PMA (Tucker 1957, no. 166); a large 10-inch pair, part of an extensive polychrome tea and coffee service, Hirschl and Adler, New York, as of 1996.

Book excerpt: David B. Warren, Michael K. Brown, Elizabeth Ann Coleman, and Emily Ballew Neff. American Decorative Arts and Paintings in the Bayou Bend Collection. Houston: Princeton Univ. Press, 1998.