Bowl

17th-early 18th century

This object exemplifies techniques developed by diverse Silk Route cultures to reproduce at home products and craftsmanship made familiar through travel and trade. This Iranian bowl is an example of "Gombroon" ware, made from a hard, compact stone paste meant to imitate Chinese porcelain and ornamented with incised, pierced, or cobalt blue or black painted decoration under a transparent colorless glaze.

The bowl recalls in particular the translucent and delicate Chinese porcelain known as linlong. Yet the decoration of linglong ware, which dates to the Qianlong era (1736–1795), is believed to have been inspired by that of Gombroon ware, since no such objects were produced in China until the reign of Qianlong. The fragile, lace-like porcelain—known as the "rice- grain porcelain of China"—was produced by piercing rice grain-sized holes into the body of the vessel while the clay was still soft, filling the holes with a clear glaze, and then firing the object to create a translucent pattern.