The sugar bowl, in a specialised form, begins to appear in about 1690. By the latter part of the 18th century, the standard form for the sugar bowl or basket had become vase shaped, often pierced as with this example and provided with a coloured glass liner. Silver pierced work was enormously popular in the mid 18th century when the Sheffield plating industry was just getting under way.

The traditional silversmith's technique for executing this type of work was with a fretsaw which proved quite unsuitable for Sheffield plate. The teeth of the saw ripped the silver surface, tearing it away from the copper core and leaving a jagged edge. The copper core itself was exposed to view at the same time. The solution adopted to overcome this was to use a fly punch. This consisted of a large screw, secured in a frame, which had a large cross bar at the top with weights at either end. This machine works on the same principle as an early printing press, serving to translate a horizontal movement into a vertical downward thrust. The lower end drove a hardened steel cutting tool, shaped to the pattern required, directly through the surface of the metal in one operation causing the uppermost silver skin to be dragged over the copper core and so at the same time concealing it. The underside of the sheet being pierced is protected by a bedding tool, thus preventing any possible distortion.

Sheffield plate originated with the discovery in 1743 by a working cutler of Sheffield, Thomas Boulsover (1704-88), that bars of silver and copper, in unequal proportions, fused by heating under pressure, could be rolled into sheets of laminated metal and worked like silver. The industry this material created, flourished for approximately one hundred years until superseded by electroplating in the 1840s.

The process Joseph Hancock (1711-1790) developed for the large-scale production of fused plate (Sheffield plate) differed little throughout the course of the industry. An ingot of copper was covered with a thin sheet of sterling silver. These ingots were approximately 1½ to 1¾ inches thick and 2½ inches wide by 8 inches long. This could vary according to the weight and size of the plated sheet that was required to be made. Generally speaking however, the thickness of the silver sheet was 1/40 that of the copper block which meant that 10-12 oz of silver was used for every 8 lbs of copper.

After about 1760, it became the practice to plate two sides of the copper ingot so that the resulting sheet was plated with silver on both sides. In 1830, Samuel Roberts (1763-1849) patented a variation (no. 5963), July 1830) whereby a sheet of German silver, an alloy of copper, zinc and nickel, was inserted between the silver and the copper block. This produced a laminate of far greater durability.