Porcelain bowl China, South China Song to Yuan dynasty 968 - 1368 Diameter 16 cm, height 9 cm Shallow bowl made of Qingbai ( é’白 , "blue or green and white") porcelain with floral incised decoration, lotus-shaped exterior and later attached silver rim. The monochrome porcelains from Jingdezhen owe their mostly light blue, occasionally greenish tint to minimal traces of iron in the glaze of the white porcelain body. Initially provided only with incised decoration, since the Southern Song period also model-formed for mass production, they represent the earliest type of Chinese export porcelain (the Fonthill Vase in the Irish National Museum, which was a gift of the Yuan Emperor Toghon Temür / Huizong to Pope Benedict XII in 1338, may have been the first Chinese porcelain object ever to find its way to Europe). Since the bowls are fired upside down in order to be able to fire larger pieces without deformation, the rims are usually unglazed and, in the case of specimens that have been used as drinking bowls, as in this case, have rims of precious metal. When Central Asian cobalt arrived in China in the Yuan period, painted decoration began to be experimented with, following models from Cizhou, and at the same time as glazes became chemically purer, Qingbai ware gradually transformed into the classic blue and white painted porcelain that we now regard as the classical Chinese porcelain. We guarantee the specified age!