The Minton factory exhibited at least four of these pierced pots at the London International Exhibition of 1862, where they were bought for the Museum’s collections. The design is based on Dehua porcelain brush pots of about 1700-1720, to which gilded borders painted in black enamel have been added. Both the idea of making these copies and the design for the borders probably came from Dr Christopher Dresser (1834-1904), who frequently used similar leaf forms to those in the border pattern in his designs for textiles and surface ornament. Dresser trained as a botanist, championed Chinese and Japanese design, and became one of the most distinctive and influential designers working in nineteenth-century Britain. The pot appears to be made of Parian porcelain, a material developed in the 1840s for making unglazed ceramic reproductions of carved marble sculpture, but which the Minton factory occasionally used glazed or partly glazed for functional and decorative wares. The pierced decoration was cut by hand, which may have been easier in Parian porcelain than the bone china body more normally used at Minton’s factory for finely potted functional ceramics at this time. The pots were intended for matches or ‘spills’ (small strips of wood used for lighting fires). Some were fitted with liners of coloured glass.