The eight-lobed wine cup was made within the Mughal empire, probably in about 1650. It rests on a low ring foot that encloses a four-petalled flower head with a multi-petalled flower at the centre. Two leaves carved at opposite sides of the bowl terminate in large flower buds on stalks that recurve to form pierced handles and are worked from the same block of crystal. A continuous border of dianthus blossoms, each with a small bud on a slender stalk rising upwards on the right, encloses the cup at the bottom. At the top is a border of rounded arches with tassel motifs suspended from the vertical lines between them. The main border design consists of smaller dianthus flowers, buds and tendrils bearing small five-petalled flowers in a seemingly random arrangement that probably disguises imperfections in the rock crystal, as the design of the long, leafy tendrils certainly do.
In 1875, this bowl was bought from the auction of the estate of Colonel Charles Seton Guthrie by Mr. Arthur Wells, who was considered to be the first private British collector of Chinese jade. His collection of jade and other hardstone objects from South Asia was on exhibition at the South Kensington Museum at the time of his death in 1882 and this collection was left to the museum in his will.