Round enamelled copper plate with shallow well painted in colours on a dark ground with a Biblical scene from the book of Genesis chapter 25, verses 24-26, as indicated by the inscription ‘GENESE. XXV’ at the top of the scene, to the right of the initials ‘S.C.’, for the enameller, Susanne Court. Rebekah rests in a bed with turquoise canopy and purple fringe and coverlet, having just given birth to her twin sons Esau and Jacob. Her turquoise slippers can be seen on the floor at the foot of the bed. In the centre foreground, a young woman in blue and purple clothing pours water from a ewer into a footed basin on the side of which lies a cloth. An older woman with blue headdress and rolled up sleeves, who may have acted as midwife, holds Jacob over the basin to wash him. Another young woman in blue dress cradles Esau, who has already been bathed, in a towel on her lap while reaching up for another towel being warmed in front of the fire by a fourth woman in purple. The tall fireplace has ornate curved sides. The floor is gilded to resemble tiles - quatrefoils alternating with lozenges. In the background behind the bed and to the left of a high arched door, Isaac kneels before a window, through which sky and foliage can be seen. He may be thanking God for the safe arrival of his sons for whom he had waited nearly 20 years.

The curving well of the plate is decorated with a band of gilded interlaced ornament. The border of the plate is gilded with delicate foliate decoration interspersed with painted grotesque ornament in the form of with women’s faces in elaborate blue headdresses, the faces of putti, and male and female sphinxes wearing ornate saddle cloths facing each other over lidded vases. The plate rim is enamelled white. The back of the plate is painted with strapwork in grisaille interwoven with grotesque faces alternating with term figures, picked out with flesh tints. The background is scattered over with foliate decoration surrounded by a ring of scrolls. The border is gilded with a garland of laurel leaves and berries.

Susanne Court selected elements from two different birth scenes by Etienne Delaune (ca.1519-83) whose series of 36 Genesis engravings was published during the 1560s. His version of the Birth of Esau and Jacob (pl.29 of his series) shows Rebekah in the act of giving birth, centre foreground. In his engraving, the focus is on Jacob taking Esau by the heel as he emerges second from his mother (the name Jacob means ‘to take by the heel’, and by extension to supplant, which is what he later went on to do). Susanne Court has retained Delaune’s room with canopied bed, still with knotted left-hand curtain, the same fireplace with a woman holding up a towel to warm, and Isaac, leaning on the sill, still looks out through the same window. But the enameller prefers to show Rebekah in bed resting shortly after having given birth, while her favourite son, Jacob, is bathed in the foreground. These elements she has borrowed from Delaune’s engraving of the Birth of Joseph to Rachel (pl.36 of his Genesis series). By conflating the two print sources, Susanne Court chose to design a rather more simple and appealing domestic scene in contrast to a more busy and dramatic one. She knew what worked best for the circular format of the well of a plate and how to balance the blocks of different enamel colours. In centre stage, she placed Jacob, who was eventually to become patriarch of the nation of Israel, and directly above him, at the top of the scene, she has positioned the figure of his father Isaac, son of Abraham.

The grotesques on the plate may have been after models by Etienne Delaune or by Jacques Androuet Ducerceau ( ca.1515-ca.1585) whose term figures appeared in Petits Panneaux Grotesques, Paris, 1562.