Uniting the ornate Northern Baroque floral style with the exotic shape of Islamic objects, this lavabo set reflects its unusual history. The coat of arms and initials are those of Ioan Serban Cantacuzino, grand duke and ruler of Wallachia (r. 1678–88). Its substantial weight of nearly ten pounds of silver suggests that it was intended for the dowry of his daughter Cassandra (1682–1713), who married the Moldavian grand prince Dimitrie Cantemir (1673–1723) in 1699. Cantemir's attempt to liberate his country from the Ottomans in 1711 ended in disaster. The grand prince put his state under Russian suzerainty and went into exile in Russia. The ewer and basin are rare survivors, since most silver objects of the Balkans were melted down for their value. The set is recorded in a Russian imperial inventory in 1859 and again in the 1901 inventories of the "Private Cabinet of Peter the Great and Treasure Gallery" of the Imperial Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg. It was sold by the Soviet government in 1932.

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