This large and experimental charger, created in the Spanish town of Manises in around 1450, is alive with the energy of the kiln, its shimmering metallic lustre sporadically rendered a pale golden hue by heat flares erupting around it during firing. Broad friezes of ribbon ornament studded with swirling conchiform dots radiate in all directions up the vessel's flared sides. Each ribbon is picked out against a densely hatched ground, and the broad fields filled with this harmoniously repeating pattern are punctuated by a central rope-twist motif encircling the entire vessel.

The coat of arms emblazoned at the centre of the vessel, depicting a particoloured lion with a central bar across its body, has been identified as that of the prominent Liguoro family of Naples, who commissioned and exported it from Aragon to Italy as an exotic object of display that showcased their wealth and enhanced their status. The two original suspension holes drilled above the escutcheon, close to the charger's rim, would have allowed it to be hung from a cord or ribbon, much as contemporary panel paintings are known to have been displayed in domestic settings. That is very likely how it would have been enjoyed and shown off to visitors when not brought into use as a luxury centrepiece during feasts, weddings, and other special occasions.

The term lustreware is traditionally used to describe a glazed earthenware ceramic painted with an iridescent finish. It flashes and shimmers with a sheen produced using copper oxides painted by hand onto an already fired vessel, before being fused indelibly in place by reheating in a kiln starved of oxygen. The technique was first developed by Abbasid potters in the ninth century before being introduced during the Umayyad Caliphate into southern Spain. By the early fourteenth century it had travelled north to Valencia, where potters developed some of the most beguiling and seductive forms of pottery anywhere in western Europe. Deeply embedded in the visual culture of their age, the extraordinary popularity of these wares owed much to a diplomatic mission and an entrepreneurial landowner. In 1308-9 Pere Boyl, lord of Manises in the western suburbs of Valencia, visited Granada as part of a legation for the kingdom of Aragon. Recognising the commercial potential of the extraordinary lustred ceramics he encountered there, he moved quickly to establish a rival industry by resettling Muslim potters on his lands, offering them employment and relative protection from persecution in the process.

By the 1320s, production at Manises had become well established, and its celebrated potters went on to corner the market for prestige ceramics for more than two hundred years. Their wares, which won international acclaim and graced the tables of kings, queens, clerics and noblemen across Europe, have come to be known collectively as 'Hispano-moresque', reflecting their blending of an aesthetic language rooted in Islamic art with the heraldry, fashions and emblems of their wealthy Christian patrons. Many thousands of lustred Hispano-moresque ceramics were produced in Valencia's kilns during the fourteenth, fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, but every one that has come down to us is a uniquely decorated testament to the skill of its potters.