The pap boat is a simple vessel for feeding infants and invalids pap, a concoction of bread or flour sprinkled with sugar combined with milk or water.  The form appears in English silver by the second decade of the eighteenth century and in the American colonies by 1738, when Joseph Richardson records making one.   The number of extant Charleston examples attests to its popularity there, and Louis Boudo’s are distinctive for the addition of a decorative scallop shell on the back. The form persisted well into the nineteenth century, as evidenced by Tiffany’s 1880 Blue Book.

Related examples: An identical pap boat is pictured in Warren 1968, I-I-B. A simpler example is recorded in a private collection.

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.