18th Century Pack Baskets
Most 18th century baskets are identifiable by their shape, often with a unique name and a distinct function. Those skinny conical baskets you use to sell strawberries are pottles. Those broad, round baskets that your laundress uses to carry your clothes to the wash are buckbaskets.
But what are the backpack baskets that peddlers and hawkers use to carry their wares? The modern name tends to be “pack basket,” but I’m not clear on the right 18th century term for such a thing. Possibly dosser or dorser, but these really refer to a large basket used to carry goods “on Horſeback” or “on either ſide [of] a beaſt of burthen.”
If I find the historic English term for the 18th century backpack basket, I’ll add it here. In the meanwhile, here are some examples of these pack baskets from 18th century illustrations.
Additional Resources
Landscape with conversing peasants by Pieter de Molijn, c. 1640
The Bakers Cart by Jean Michelin, 1656
Le Fendeur de Bois, after 1674
The Cryes of the City of London Drawne after the Life, by Marcellus Laroon II, 1688, including Remember the Poor Priſoners and Buy my Flounders
Wanderer by Jan Luyken, 1711
Diep Watersz: Strand: Staaten en andere Bockom
Several of Edme Bouchardon’s drawings of the Cris de Paris, c. 1730s, including a baker boy, a broom seller, a pottery seller, a street seller, and an oyster seller
Evening at the Piazza by Giacomo Ceruti, c. 1730
Spinner and farmer with a basket by Giacomo Cerruti
A washerwoman by Louis Philippe Boitard, c. 1733-1763
A woman in rustic dress by Paul Sandby, c. 1740-1765
Boy with a basket by Giacomo Ceruti, 1745
A woman carrying a heavy load, c. 1749
The Joys of Motherhood by Jean-Honoré Fragonard
The ink seller (“Ink, ink, come buy my fine ink, for money that I want to buy me some drink”) by Paul Sandby, 1759
Pages 9, 10, 12, 16, 19, 20, 21, 22, 25, 26, 27, 28, 34, 36, 39, etc. in the Cries of Danzig, c. 1765
Woman with baskets and stick by Johann Andreas Benjamin Nothnagel, 1772
Cris de Paris, 1774, including sellers of watercress, herbs, boxes, sand, and chickweed
Pretzel baker, c 1775
A Collection of Etchings after the Most Eminent Masters of the Dutch and Flemish Schools, c. 1782-1803
An Edinburgh Fishwife by David Allan, c. 1785
Village woman carrying a basket on her back and villager carrying a basket on his back by Johannes Pieter de Frey, 1790s
Farmer with a basket on his back
Pay de Veaud, c. 1795-1831
Cries of Edinburgh: sellers of salt, haddock, caller oſts, 1803
