The decoration of this blue-and-white delftware jar is inspired by mid seventeenth–century Chinese porcelain. A rolling landscape inhabited by robed figures is broken on either side by rocky crags, with areas left white to represent mist. The decoration is not, however, a direct copy of a Chinese original; the Dutch artist has absorbed the Chinese style and produced an original, European composition. The relationship between Dutch ceramics and any Asian prototype is further complicated by the fact that many of these Dutch earthenware imitations of Chinese-style blue-and-white porcelain are not based directly on Chinese models, but on Japanese copies of Chinese porcelains.