This porcelain dish also known as ko-sometsuke (old blue and white), was made for the Japanese market. The blue spots were achieved by blowing cobalt blue pigment through a tube or flicking the pigment off a brush. This dish is also typified by ‘moth-eaten’ edges where the glaze had fritted, and a thick glaze had filled with bubbles. The Japanese considered these imperfections natural and in keeping with the simple and understated Japanese tea ceremony, in which this dish would have been used. It is a sweetmeat dish (mokuzuke), formed part of a set of five or ten, and was used during or after the tea ceremony.
