This dish is both moulded and under-glaze printed with the famous 'Blue Willow' design which creates an attractive decorative effect. Enoch Wood was one of the largest and most important early Staffordshire factories making pottery in the early 19th century, and made vast quantities for export, much of which was unmarked. This dish has an extremely rare impressed initial or name-mark 'E.WOOD 'White enamel china' BURSLEM'. A fragment of a small plate excavated in California, now part of the Diaz Collection, is also marked in this way. The style of the dish suggests a date of c.1825 at a time when the factory was operating as Enoch Wood & Sons. and their wares were usually marked as such. Godden and Cushion list this mark as predation the firm's name change in 1818, however in 1828 vessels marked with simply the name 'WOOD' were deposited by the firm in a 'time capsule' within a church under construction.