This dish has a semi-circular gap in its rim to fit around the neck. Such bowls were used by barber-surgeons, barbers who would also perform basic medical procedures, to shave clients and possibly also to collect blood during the bloodletting process. The shape is practical as all liquids can be caught in the bowl. Some also have a small hollow receptacle in the rim which could be used for a small ball of shaving soap. The customer held the basin in his hands with the indentation against his neck, while the barber mixed the soap and water in the bowl to produce a lather. Two holes, pierced through the rim, are for string so that the bowl could be hung on the wall when not in use.

The blue and white decoration is a free interpretation of Chinese (late Wanli) wares of the early 17th century. The Dutch East India Company imported Asian porcelain throughout the 17th century and it became a fashionable and expensive luxury. Dutch potters copied the porcelain's exotic decoration of blue plants and birds in order to make their wares more appealing.

An early eighteenth-century English delftware barber's bowl is decorated with the tools of the barber's trade (V&A Museum number 297-1869) inside the well of the bowl: scissors, a knife, soap and a comb. On the rim is an inscription implying that this particular bowl was for professional use at a barber's shop rather than for domestic use. Similar basins were also made in brass and pewter. Famously, in Cervantes' Don Quixote, published in two volumes in 1605 and 1615 respectively, Quixote wears an old pewter shaving basin on his head which he believes to be a old magic helmet.