Blackadder visited Venice in 1954, on a Carnegie Travelling Scholarship. As well as Venice and Brindisi in Italy she also visited Yugoslavia, then Athens and Thessaloniki in Greece. It was not practical for Blackadder to paint in oils during these scholarship travels and she mainly used brush, pen and ink. This painting is likely to have been inspired by her visit to Venice in 1954, but was probably executed later. Tonally it is similar to works produced in the early and mid–1960s. As with many of Blackadder‘s still life works this painting features a table, tilted almost vertically towards the viewer, making it difficult to distinguish from the picture plane. On it are arranged a number of objects – a bottle, a tall goblet or vase, a bowl with fruit, a yellow tumbler and some other, less distinct objects.