The Water Lane pottery, later known as the Bristol Pottery, operated between 1682 or 1683 and 1886. It made delftware until 1777, when it was taken over by Richard Frank, who also made stoneware. His son-in-law, Joseph Ring, purchased the pottery in 1784 and in 1786 began to make creamware, which was continued after his death in 1788 by his widow and partners. Transfer-printed decoration was probably introduced after one of the latter, Henry Carter, took control in about 1797, but was little used until the 1820s.

The commemorative design on this rare model obelisk is one of the few printed patterns attributable to the pottery at the beginning of the nineteenth century. It is one of an enormous number of prints which were inspired by the Revolutionary or Napoleonic Wars, and the heart-felt relief when they were over. The design incorporates figures of Peace and Plenty on either side of an altar inscribed ‘PEACE/Signed at/AMiENs/between/ENGLAND/FRANCE/ SPAIN/AND HOLLAND/March 27 1802’. In the background there is a view of the works inscribed ‘Bristol Pottery’. The design also appears on mugs and was re-used with an updated inscription to celebrate the Peace of Paris in 1814.

Obelisks had been popular for funerary and other monuments in England since the sixteenth century and were associated with ancient Egypt and imperial Rome, because of the Egyptian obelisks set up there.