Almost certainly unfinished, this unusual bottle must have left the enamellers' workshop before the colours other than red had been applied. The circular cartouches would have been decorated with some pictorial images in several colours, while the spaces left for the leaves, in the red enamel, would also have been coloured in green and other pigments. This suggests that the painter of the background was a different artist from the painter of the cartouches; see also no. 44. In all probability there was a shortfall in the number of enamelled pieces ready to be transported to Nagasaki, via Imari, for sale to the Dutch, in the year this piece was made. Consequently, it would have been counted as an enamelled piece, as indeed it was, for the purposes of making up the numbers of types ordered. One frequently sees blue-and-white pieces which have only a slight enamelling, clearly contemporary, presumably hurriedly added, in order to make up the numbers.