When this seder plate was catalogued in 1899 by the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC, it was thought to have been made by Spanish Jews in the thirteenth century and glazed in Italy in the sixteenth. However it is actually one of a large number of forged Italian majolica (glazed earthenware) seder plates of similar design, made in the late nineteenth century. The Benguiats probably acquired it at that time, when they lived in Italy.