A rare "Samarra" bowl with green splashes, China for the Middle Eastern market; and, a tin-glaze pottery bowl, probably Iran, both 9-10th century

both with convex flaring sides and everted foliated rim on a low foot, the Chinese bowl with characteristic disc-form or "bi-shaped" foot and interior with raised mouldings aligned with the foliate indentations on the rim, both decorated with coloured trails running into the well

inscription
Repetition of possibly:'abadahu
'His (God's) servant'

An attractive example of a Chinese Tang porcelain bowl with pearly white glaze, together with an Abbasid tin-glaze imitation. A Tang bowl without the copper green decoration sold in these rooms, 18 April 2007, lot 40.

Alan Caiger-Smith describes the significance of this ceramic: "The Tang potters had achieved two kinds of ware which evidently impressed the ruling classes of Mesopotamia: a hard, yellowish-white stoneware, and an off-white and slightly translucent ware, the first porcelain. White porcelain was unknown in the Middle East and the whiteness alone of this Tang porcelain and stoneware would have made it famous. The porcelain was exquisitely thrown, and the pearly-white glaze was extremely beautiful. It was the ware that inspired the first tin-glaze earthenware, which was probably made for the Caliph's court in Baghdad." (Caiger-Smith, A., Tin-glaze pottery in Europe and the Islamic World, London, 1973, p.23)