A Monumental Safavid imitation celadon dish, Persia, 17th Century

of wide shallow form with narrow flaring rim on a broad foot, covered in a green slip ground and decorated in white slip with touches of cobalt blue with floral and foliate stems with large lotus-palmette blossoms issuing from a base point with leafy tufts, the border with a chain pattern band, the back and base glazed

Published in 1400 Years of Islamic Art, London, 1981, no.123

If contemporary European travellers and the records of the Dutch and British East India Companies are to be trusted then much of the best Persian pottery was produced in the city of Kirman during the Safavid period. One of these travellers, the Frenchman, Jean Baptiste Chardin, noted that green-glazed dishes and particularly Chinese celadons (porcelaine verte) were more highly prized than others on account of their ability to detect and neutralise poison in food (A.Lane, Later Islamic Pottery, London, 1957, p.72). A more mundane explanation might be that the glazed and durable porcelains were easier to clean and therefore more hygenic than the metalwares traditionally used in the kitchen.

However, the myth persisted, not just in Persia but in other parts of the Islamic world, and the celadons of the Longquan kilns and their imitations are amongst the most widespread luxury wares found at Muslim courts across Asia and the Middle East, as evidenced by the collections of the Ardebil shrine, Tabriz, and the Topkapi Saray, Istanbul, as well as substantial archaeological finds from prestigious contexts such as the citadels of Damascus, Aleppo and Hama in Syria.