It is all that survives of what was once a baptismal font or stoup, a basin used for holy water, and it has been sitting in storage long enough that its exact origins have become a matter of some scholarly debate. The fragment measures around half a metre in diameter when complete, though only about twenty centimetres of the arc now remains.

The piece most likely came from a medieval church associated with Kells Priory, the substantial Augustinian complex in south County Kilkenny, founded in the twelfth century and still one of the more striking walled priory ruins in Ireland. The decoration, carved in false relief, meaning the design is raised against a recessed background rather than deeply cut, points to a thirteenth or fourteenth century date, a period when such foliage motifs were common in Irish ecclesiastical stonework. The question of where it originally stood is complicated by the fact that a medieval font now housed in St Mary's Church in Inistioge, a few miles to the east, is, according to historian Miriam Clyne writing in 2007, almost certainly the font from the Kells parish church. That leaves this fragment's precise home uncertain, its provenance hovering somewhere between the two sites without firmly belonging to either.

The fragment is held in the OPW depot in Kilkenny and is not on public display. It is the kind of object that exists at the margins of the record, catalogued and measured and photographed, but effectively invisible to anyone who has not gone looking for it.