Flower pyramid ca 1690-1720, artist unknown, Faience blue painted in the glaze
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

The pyramid consists of seven loose dishes. A wooden stick, on the inside, keeps the dishes in place. The separate little vases were necessary to ensure that all the flowers had their own water supply. A vase in one piece could not be filled to the top with water; the spouts underneath would overflow. But there was another reason for the stacked shape: the Delft potters were still not able to fire such a high shape in one piece by around 1700. The vase would have gone crooked or entirely collapsed during firing.