This eight-lobed ewer was made in Jingdezhen in Jiangxi province, a town that was to dominate the entire porcelain industry in China for century to come.

The kilns of southern China, which had earlier excelled in making green ware, started to produce white ware in the ten century. The resultant Qingbai porcelains differ from their northern counterpart in both chemical composition and firing technique (see following entry for Northern Ding wares). They were fired in a 'dragon' kiln, so called because its narrow and upward-climbing structure resembles a dragon. Such kilns were built into the side of a hill or a man-made mound and were designed to maximize heat from the fuel, which in this case was wood. Qingbai wares were fired in a reducing atmosphere, meaning the kiln was deliberately deprived of oxygen, resulting in a distinctive glassy, cool, bluish-white glaze. In Chinese, 'Qingbai' means literally 'bluish white'.

Like other whiteware, the ewer was made as a substitute for a silver vessel. Other daily not used to dining were also made in Qingbai porcelain, including lamps, pillows, incense burners, boxes and small jars. Qingbai ware was evidently an important export line from the eleventh to the fourteenth century, as examples have been found in Korea, Japan, South and South-East Asia, West Asia and North Africa. One of the earliest pieces of Chinese porcelain to reach Europe, the Fonthill vase (now in the National Museum of Ireland and once owned by a fourteenth-century king of Hungary) is of Qingbai ware.