These dishes have the common moulded plum blossom decoration and a shallow perpendicular footring that enabled them to be stacked securely on top of each other. The glaze tones vary from cold white to ivory and a warm pinkish tone, probably due to variations in glaze ingredients and/or firing conditions in different parts of the kiln. Such dishes were exported to Europe where individual pieces were sometimes fitted within a metal mount and used as salt cellars. Dehua, located on the southeast coast of Fujian province, is well known for its production of white porcelain, known to Europeans as 'blanc de Chine'. The earliest Dehua porcelain was produced as early as the 14th century but the production and quality of these porcelain peaked around the 17th and 18th centuries.
