Page 43 - Yuan Dynasty Ceramics

Chapter 07 (pp. 330-385)_Layout 1 7/7/10 5:42 PM Page 372

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7.48. White on blue dish with deep well, rim with flat bracket lobes, and unglazed base, featuring a decoration of
flying phoenixes and four cranes in a lotus pond, Yuan dynasty, mid-fourteenth century, 45 cm diameter. Made at
Jingdezhen. Topkapi Palace Museum, Istanbul.

an antidote to all toxins. Since poisoning at the hands of kilns at Ravy near Teheran, Raqqa, in northern
rivals was of great concern to Mongol princes, this drug Mesopotamia, and Kashan, near Tabriz, produced white
was highly prized: in return for this medicine, the Yuan wares, some of which imitated Chinese exports from
emperor sent 3,300 gold ingots to the Il-Khan in 1332. 187 Ding and Jingdezhen. Later, indigenous techniques of
The passion for cobalt blue ceramics in central Asia under- and overglaze painting in a limited range of col-
can be traced back to Babylon (ca. 575 b.c.e.). During the ors, including cobalt blue, were added to the repertoire. A
first half of the eighth century, it seems that opacified tin manuscript of 1301 describes Kashan’s production of
glazes were used in Abbasid Iraq at Basra first to provide lustrous, underglaze painted wares and the earlier men-
a suitable ground for new cobalt and luster ware tech- tioned “la¯vard wares.” In a Persian “illuminated manu-
niques and subsequently to imitate Chinese sancai script” painted about 1360, two-lidded bottles, a large jar,
wares. 188 Prior to the Mongol invasion of Persia in 1219, and architectural tiles that look like Kashani underglaze

372 Yuan Dynasty Ceramics