Ashmolean Eastern Art Online, Yousef Jameel Centre for Islamic and Asian Art

For the third time in Islamic history, a new wave of Chinese pottery reached the Middle East in the 1300s and transformed again the nature of Islamic ceramics.

Chinese porcelain decorated in cobalt blue (‘blue-and-white' ware) started to be made in the kilns of Jingdezhen around the 1320s, largely for export. A century and a half later, the imports to the Middle East had grown to a flood that continued for centuries up to the present day.

From the 1400s onwards, Islamic potters devoted great effort to making sometimes slavish, sometimes imaginative copies of blue-and-white porcelain.

Moulded monochrome vessels from Iran imitating Chinese greenware

Blue and white ware