During the late nineteenth century, Trenton was the epicenter in America for the manufacture of both fine and commercial-grade ceramics. The Burroughs and Mountford pottery was best known for the good-quality hotel ware it produced in large quantities for the national market. In 1892, however, the firm began making more sophisticated art pottery. This monumental covered vase is one of the most ambitious examples of American ceramics known. As with many other potteries, the impetus for creating this and a higher class of ceramics derived from the firm's desire for an impressive showing at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago.

Said to have been executed by a Japanese artist, the vase displays finely worked, raised silver and gold decoration on a rich mazarine blue ground. It is a compendium of the Japanesque motifs then in vogue with Western decorative artists: a golden hawk, ducks, a peacock, peonies, chrysanthemums, prunus, lotus blossoms, and stylized clouds. The vase recalls Japanese lacquer and Satsuma wares, as well as fine porcelains in the Japanese style of Minton's or Royal Worcester, then popular in the United States. A tour de force when it was made, the vase was considered "a masterpiece of American pottery."