Chinese ceramics have been excavated at a variety of sites throughout the early Islamic empire of the ‘Abbasid caliphate, with its capital at Baghdad, signifying a taste for these costly imported wares that clearly extended beyond the court. In order to satisfy that predilection, Iraqi potters in the ninth century began to imitate the whiteness of high-fired porcelain by covering low-fired earthenware with an opaque white glaze of tin oxide. Whereas the originals had a pure white surface, the examples made in Iraq feature inscriptions or geometric and vegetal designs painted on the raw glazed surface in copper green, manganese purple, or most commonly, as here, in cobalt blue, which was fixed in a single firing.

• Lo Terrenal y lo Divino: Arte Islámico siglos VII al XIX Colección del Museo de Arte del Condado de Los Ángeles. Santiago: Centro Cultural La Moneda, 2015.

• Hess, Catherine. The Arts of Fire: Islamic Influences on Glass and Ceramics of the Italian Renaissance. Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Trust, 2004.
• Komaroff, Linda.  Islamic Art at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.  Los Angeles:  Museum Associates, 2005.