By the early 16th century, northern European brass dishes had become greater in diameter, the depressions shallower and the flanges of the rims wider than they had been in the 15th century. Pictorial themes continued to be used in decoration but the wider bases afforded scope for an increasing use of abstract decoration. A central motif might be bounded by one or two concentric bands of decoration - either interlaced scroll-like waves or lettering. This decoration was not necessarily embossed with punches in the traditional manner but was often cast in the mould at an earlier stage in the manufacture. The inscriptions themselves were usually meaningless and were incorporated into the overall design merely for their decorative value.

Production of such bowls was centred in Nuremberg but not exclusively. Other centres of brass production were Dinant in Flanders and its immediate neighbourhood, from Bouvignes to Aachen. Techniques and styles were copied with equal facility everywhere so it is difficult to assign a place of manufacture within northern Europe to any dish produced during the 16th and 17th centuries. For example, not only did the export of dishes from the Dinant area provide prototypes for others to follow, but the downfall of the town in 1466 to Charles the Bold of Burgundy saw the dispersal of refugee metalworkers.

Those dishes exported to Britain were sometimes used as alms dishes. Elsewhere their function was primarily secular. European paintings of domestic interiors show that they were frequently used in conjunction with lavabos (basins) or ewers, also in brass, for washing hands after a meal. Before the 17th century, when forks became customary, such equipment was essential to any dining table.

The scene depicted in this dish is the Fall of Man, otherwise known as the Temptation (Genesis 3: 1-7). God had warned Adam on pain of death not to eat the fruit of ‘the tree of the knowledge of good and evil’. But the serpent, the cleverest of all God’s creatures, persuaded Eve, saying ‘your eyes will be opened and you will be like gods knowing both good and evil’. Eve ate the fruit and gave some to Adam, who ate it too. ‘Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they discovered that they were naked; so they stitched leaves together and made themselves loincloths.’ Depictions of this scene usually represent the tree of knowledge as an apple or fig tree. The serpent is typically shown twined round the trunk of the tree - a motif probably derived from a pre-Christian image of the dragon guarding the tree of Hesperides. Adam and Eve are usually depicted standing by the tree, Eve holding the fruit or in the act of plucking it, or, having taken a bite, offering it to Adam. Medieval typology saw the Temptation as a foreshadowing of the Annunciation, in which the Virgin Mary as the ‘new Eve’ redeemed the sin of the old. The scene in the centre of this dish is surrounded by laurels of floral scrollwork and simulated inscription that has been done with repeating stamps.