The brass dish dates from the mid-16th century. It is damascened, a technique which involved decorating engraved iron, brass or steel with gold or silver wire. The technique originated in Damascus and was mostly used by Islamic craftsmen.

This dish was made for an unidentified Italian family, whose coat-of-arms decorates the centre. The dish is decorated in the 'Veneto-Saracenic' style with motifs and patterns inspired by Islamic art forms popular in Venice during the 15th and 16th centuries. Much so-called "Veneto-Saracenic" metalwork was actually produced in Mamluk lands for export to Europe. This example, though, may be the product of a Venetian craftsman working in a Mamluk-inspired idiom: the arabesque ornament is less abstract and more regulated than on traditional Mamluk wares.

In Venice, the production of brass dishes and vessels flourished in the first half of the 16th century. They were very elaborately decorated but not with traditional European linear ornamentation. Venice, during this period, traded and fought extensively with the Turkish and Arab empires which bordered the Mediterranean basin. Thus Venetian merchants brought back to the city Near Eastern goods that had an immediate influence on local design, and eventually the rest of Europe.

Decoration on Venetian brass was more extensive, often covering the entire surface of an object. The arabesque pattern, base on a stylised plant with a winding stem, was studied and copied by contemporary Italian artists. By the middle of the 16th century, the arabesque as a form of ornament was beginning to influence craftsmen all over Europe, and became incorporated into the development of European ornamental design, until the decline of the Rococo in the late 18th century.