This large bowl is made from fritware (also called stone paste and quartz paste), an artificial ceramic body developed by Middle Eastern potters around the middle of the 11th century to imitate the hard, bright white body of imported Chinese porcelains. The main ingredient in fritware was fine quartz powder made by grinding sand or pebbles. Small quantities of white clay and a glassy substance known as frit were added – the clay to give plasticity, the frit to bind the body after firing. In the 12th and early 13th centuries, fritware was used in Kashan and other pottery centres in Iran to produce fine wares decorated in an astonishing range of styles.

The decoration of this bowl is painted in lustre, an overglaze technique using metallic pigments derived from silver and copper, first invented in Iraq in the early 9th century. The lustre pigments were painted on the hard shiny surface of the pot after it had been glazed, and it was then refired in a reducing kiln (an atmosphere starved of oxygen). The bold central design of a seated figure, holding a leaf in its right hand, and proffering a fruit in its left, is drawn in what has been called the 'monumental style', which was characteristic of the products of the major pottery centre at Kashan.

The rim is decorated with a very sketchy version of cursive inscriptions, and the back of the dish is covered all-over with a cobalt blue glaze, which has seeped through onto the front in places, suggesting that this dish was fired face down, to protect the delicate lustre decoration.