Dish, fritware, painted in underglaze cobalt blue with s scholar in a landscape, Iran, 1600-1640. Victoria & Albert museum © V&A Images
Large dish, fritware, painted with an imitation-Chinese composition including a seated figure in underglaze cobalt blue.
By the 1620s, Iranian potters were producing convincing copies of the Chinese porcelain imports flooding into Iran since the 1580s. The challenge was to produce well-painted Kraak-style designs on thinly walled vessels.The panelled border around the rim is almost a direct copy of a Kraak-style dish. However, the seated scholar in the centre of the dish, while utlimately based on a Chinese figure type, has been adapted as a poet with a flask of wine, a popular subject found in Iranian painting in the Safavid period.