An elegant silver basket for serving bread or cake bears London marks for 1783 – 1784 on the underside of its handle. Made shortly before Mary Sterett married Richard Gittings, Sr., in Baltimore in 1788, the basket is engraved with the initials “JDS” for Mary’s parents, John Sterett and Deborah Ridgely Sterett. Perhaps it was a wedding present. In any case, the basket descended in the Gittings family until it came to the BMA in 1949. Charles Willson Peale’s portrait of Mary hangs above.