Willem Dolphyn was a devoted collector of ceramics, glassware and small domestic curiosities, assembling an extensive personal archive of objects that recur across his paintings. These items were not chosen purely for display but for their associative and imaginative potential. Dolphyn often described his compositions as arriving in dreams, later formed in the studio. Golden Figs centres on an ornate Venetian-style flute whose stem is formed by delicate glass scrolls resembling angelic wings. Light passes cleanly through the transparent glass, giving the object an almost weightless presence, heightened by its contrast with the richly decorated gilt-mounted bowl and the dark, velvety skins of the figs.