This piece, described as a 'bottle' was bought for the South Kensington Museum by Caspar Purdon Clarke on his purchasing expedition to India made in 1881-2. It was made by the potter Abdul Majid in Khurja, a historic centre of ceramic production said to have been established in the 14th century and still renowned for its ceramic industry. The name of the town in present-day Uttar Pradesh means 'waste land'. According to Sir George Watt in the official catalogue of the Delhi Exhibition of 1902-1903, Indian Art at Delhi, 1903, Khurja had originally produced pottery in a style all of its own, with decoration raised in slight relief by the use of slips in floral patterns picked out in white and blue against a warm orange brown or pale claret coloured field. Later a rich green-blue was introduced. By the time of the Delhi Exhibition Watt laments that the disctinctive style of Khurja had vanished and that their wares imitated those made at Multan with a 'dull and faded' blue and were made in a number of 'quaint shapes'. This piece would seem to be in the Multan style.