 The punchbowls are a ' harlequin pair ' , similar but not exactly matching . The bowls have been donated independently , one to the State Library of New South Wales ( SLNSW ) in 1926 and the other to the Australian National Maritime Museum ( ANMM ) in 2006 . The Library bowl is the more widely known of the pair . Its earliest provenance places it in England in the late 1840s , where it is said to originally have been commissioned for William Bligh ; another source suggests Henry Colden Antill . It passed through several owners in Britain before it was presented to the State Library . The Museum bowl 's first provenance is from England in 1932 and it has been suggested that it was made to the order of Arthur Phillip . Its whereabouts were unknown until it appeared in the Newark Museum , United States , in 1988 , on loan from Peter Frelinghuysen Jr .. Through donations , the Maritime Museum later acquired the punchbowl from Frelinghuysen . 
