This figure represents the Chinese goddess Guanyin, the Compassionate Bodhisattva (literally 'enlightened being'), sitting on a rock. It was made at Dehua in Fujian province, in southern China. Fujian, a tea-growing region, attracted the attention of European merchants in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and many of these figurines were brought back to Europe, where this type of white Dehua porcelain became known as 'Blanc de Chine'.

Dehua specialized in whitewares. The finest products are those with an ivory-coloured glaze, such as this Guanyin. A local publication of about 1604 describes how a 'truly fine' porcelain stone was dug by driving a shaft into the side of a hill, from where the material was then pulled out with a rope. The earliest pieces were Dehua porcelain is made of locally mined porcelain stone, with little or no clay, which thinly potted. The materials of the body and glaze integrate so well that they appear to be of a single translucent material.

The most common types of Dehua products were incense burners and Buddhist figures. Brought to Europe as exotic curiosity items, Dehua porcelain was often gilded or enamelled there in the eighteenth century - by which date Europeans were familiar with Chinese polychrome ceramics and Dehua wares may have been judged too plain. The kilns also made figures of Dutch men and women and of the Virgin and Child for export to Europe.