This large silver ladle was made in 1939-40 by the Senior Tutor on the Silver course at the Central School of Arts and Crafts. The Central School was founded in 1896 in London to provide artistic training for working craftspeople. The principal purpose of the school was described as being 'to encourage the industrial application of decorative design'. Classes at the school were intended to add design and artistic skills to the technical skills which were developed through the apprenticeship model. In the 1930s and 40s, when this ladle was made, the main subjects offered at the school were book production, costume, engraving and lithography, furniture, drawing, modelling and allied subjects, silversmiths' work and allied crafts, stained glass, textiles, interior decoration and industrial design. The standard of teaching at the school was exceptionally high. W.R. Lethaby, the school's first principal was himself a noted designer and architect . The silversmithing tutors included the jeweller H. G. Murphy from 1920 to 1935 and from September 1905 to June 1940, Edward Thomas Wyatt Ware. George Taylor Friend and F. Adam were also teaching on the course when the ladle was made.

The ladle is of a plain but elegant design, made of an unusually high gauge of silver. It was hallmarked on the eve of the war years, when the production of silver objects dropped precipitously. Although silver, unlike gold, was not rationed, younger silversmiths were recruited into the armed forces and many firms were turned over to war production - the metalworking skills and equipment used by goldsmiths being very suitable for the production of armament parts such as bomb caps. These factors, combined with limited civilian spending power, led to the number of silver items hallmarked in London dropping from about 1, 5900, 000 objects from May 1938 to May 1939, to 246, 000 in the same period in 1940-41.