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.

Bowl with bird and peonies (EA1956.114)   Bowl with geometric and floral and epigraphic decoration (EA1978.1593)   Bowl with vegetal decoration (EA2005.25)

Dish with floral decoration in radial panels (EA1978.1608)   Bowl with foliate decoration (EA1969.7)   Dish with flying crane against a floral background (EA1978.1605)

Moulded monochrome vessels from Iran imitating Chinese greenware

Bowl with three fish (EA1978.1647)   Dish with three fish and rosette (EA1978.2305)   Dish with two fish (EA2008.16)

Blue and white ware

Double-handed flask with vegetal decoration (EA1978.1701)   Bowl with bird and peonies (EA1978.1602)