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

Pieces of this form are known as ‘rice measures’, but it is not clear whether this designation refers to the baskets they imitate or to these ceramic copies. The latter would seem to be too small for measuring rice.

The piece has a globular body with a small flattened base, a somewhat waisted neck and a rolled lip. The outside is decorated with parallel combed lines, in imitation of a wicker basket, the combing centred on both sides and continuing across the underside, the neck with horizontal lines and a row of applied pointed dots of white glaze. The inside and rim are covered in a glaze that mutates from dark brown to persimmon brown, the former at the neck, the latter particularly in the centre inside, while the outside was otherwise left unglazed and shows the brown biscuit.