This dish was made from high-quality clay found under the wet topsoil of Pennsylvania's low-lying plains. Southeastern Pennsylvania's terrain could support farms on the topsoil and potteries on the subsoil, so by 1810 potteries could be found in almost every township in Buck's County.

The work of the potter fit into the agricultural calendar. The clay was dug in the fall: topsoil was cleared and a foot-deep layer of clay was sliced and shoveled into a wagon, hauled to the pottery, and stacked. Before freezing weather, the clay was carried in baskets and dumped into a mill - a round tub with a revolving post set with blades. A horse harnessed to a sweep walked slowly around the tub, turning the blades. Water was flushed through to clean the clay and the resulting mass of plastic earth turned gray to yellow. The clay was then shaped into one hundred pound blocks and stored in a cellar where it was kept moist but would not freeze.

Besides turning pottery on the wheel, Pennsylvania German potters adopted the English method of forming a shallow plate by draping a rolled slab of damp clay over a convex mold. After shaping, this dish was left to firm up before glazing.

This dish depicts a figure of a continental soldier on horseback with a pistol in his right hand and sword in his left. The plate has a thin layer of white slip (an opaque glaze), and the green design elements were colored with copper oxide. Daubs of cobalt were used to create the blue coloring on part of the flower and leaves. The figure of the horse, as well as the tips of the flowers, blanket, foliage, and border are sgraffito (incised) decoration, which was a technique highly developed by Pennsylvania potters. To create sgraffito decoration, outlines and solid areas were scratched through a coating of slip to reveal the red underbody, which then shone red through the glaze. The entire dish is covered with a thick clear yellowish lead glaze.