A rare "Samarra" bowl, China for the Middle Eastern market, 9th century

This extraordinary bowl is of exceptional interest to historians and collectors of Middle Eastern pottery.

It was made in northern China in the ninth century during the period of the Tang dynasty.  Around this time, potters at the Gongxian kilns in Henan province began to experiment with a type of pottery that was to revolutionise ceramic production in the Middle East. The Gongxian potters managed to fire a composite clay-stone body at white heat (up to 1350 degrees) for the first time, producing the world's first high-fired porcelains.

These wares were exported by sea to the Persian Gulf region and examples have been found at sites such as Siraf and Samarra, hence the name "Samarra bowl". Their arrival at the Abbasid court is documented by Muhammad ibn al-Husain (Abu'l Fadl) Baihaki, writing in A.D. 1059, who refers to a gift made by the governor of Khurasan, 'Ali ibn Isa, to the Abbasid Caliph Harun al-Rashid (r.786-809) of  "twenty pieces of Chinese porcelain (chini faghfuri) the like of which had never been seen at a Caliph's court before" (Lane 1947, p.10).  Their arrival was to change ceramic production in the Middle East forever.  Not only did they raise the awareness of patrons and potters alike to the potential of the ceramic medium, but they also generated a whole raft of low-fired tin-glazed imitations emulating the rounded form and true foot-ring of the high-status Chinese prototypes.