The exceptional dish, with its depiction of a kneeling elephant surrounded by abstract cloud formations, must be included among the dozen or two finest early Vietnamese blue-and-white porcelain dishes known. It is therefore a major addition to our small but choice collection of Vietnamese ceramics. The refined and sophisticated drawing of the charming and delightful elephant and the excellent control of the underglaze cobalt blue set the dish apart from most of the known corpus of important fifteenth- and sixteenth-century porcelains.

The technique of manufacture, shape, and general composition of design of the dish are clearly based on early Ming blue-and-white prototypes, but the whimsical elephant and the particulars of subsidiary motif are uniquely the product of Vietnamese artistic sensibilities.

A salty taste to the surface of the dish suggests it was recovered from an underwater shipwreck.