This bowl illustrates the new shapes and designs used when lustre production resumed in Iran about 1260. Its shape and panelled decoration copy Chinese bowls imported at this time.

The Mongol invasions disrupted lustre production in about 1220. When it resumed some forty years later, potters introduced new shapes and designs, as this bowl shows. About 1285, production ceased again, and no lustre ware was made in Iran until the 17th century.

The technique of lustre decoration on ceramics was first developed in Iraq in the 9th century. Potters made a glazed vessel or tile with little or no decoration in the normal way. When the piece had cooled, they painted a design over the glaze in metallic compounds. The pot or tile was then fired again, this time with a restricted supply of oxygen. In these conditions, the metallic compounds broke down, and a thin deposit of copper or silver was left on the surface of the glaze. When polished, this surface layer reflected the light.