Plate, 9.2 inches diameter. Black transfer with polychrome clobbering. Impressed maker's mark for Josiah Wedgwood. The "Z" on the end of the three-letter date code indicates a production date of 1871. This pattern is one of twelve Japanese figures used by Wedgwood on plates and tiles with a variety of borders that was produced c. 1871-1872. This pattern features a central circular medallions with a Japanese woman dressed in a kimono and wearing kanzashi hair ornaments seated on a European-style tiled floor. She uses a horse-hair bow to play a kokyū , a Japanese three-stringed instrument very similar to a shamisen. The medallion is superimposed over japonica branches. The border consists of a simple painted line.

Josiah Wedgwood was born in Burslem, Staffordshire, on July 12, 1730, into a family with a long tradition as potters. At the age of nine, after the death of his father, he worked in his family's pottery. In 1759 he set up his own pottery works in Burslem. There he produced a highly durable cream-colored earthenware that so pleased Queen Charlotte that in 1762 she appointed him royal supplier of dinnerware. From the public sale of Queen's Ware, as it came to be known, Wedgwood was able, in 1768, to build near Stoke-on-Trent a village, which he named Etruria, and a second factory equipped with tools and ovens of his own design. At first only ornamental pottery was made in Etruria, but by 1773 Wedgwood had concentrated all his production facilities there. During his long career Wedgwood developed revolutionary ceramic materials, notably basalt and jasperware. After Wedgwood's death in Etruria on January 3, 1795, his descendants carried on the business, which still produces many of his designs.