of ornament already developed;
dumpy little figures kneeling, standing or riding on grass between
cypress trees, or animals and birds similarly disposed, with
conventional borders and bands of Cufic inscriptions. Another well-known
type of pattern consists of highly conventionalized floral ornament
which often runs to a beautiful tracery of "arabesque" lines. The
drawing is generally finely outlined with brown or black (a survival of
the ancient Assyrian practice), and in the earliest pieces the flat
washes of colour are laid in only in cobalt-blue, turquoise or green
from copper, and shades of purple and brown from manganese. From the
16th century onwards Chinese influence is strongly felt both in the
designs and in the colour schemes, particularly in the wares painted
with patterns in blue only (fig. 39), which sometimes carry the
imitation of Chinese porcelain so far as to bear forged Chinese marks.
Finally, Shah Abbas I. (1587-1629) is said to have brought a number of
Chinese artificers, among them many potters, to Ispahan, and we find
that Chinese porcelain was largely painted at King-te-Chen, with blue
decorations in the Persian taste, so that we cannot be surprised at the
growth of a hybrid Perso-Chinese style of decoration. From this period,
however, Persian pottery deteriorated both in its technical and artistic
aspects. Crudely moulded figures in fairly high relief, coloured with
an opaque yellow and green as well as with transparent blue and
turquoise, began to make their appearance, especially on the famous
Persian tiles; and in the 18th century the brown and black outlines of
the drawing (a most valuable decorative resource) vanish, and we get
brighter and more glittering, yet poorer colours, including a rose-red
enamel fired over the glaze, evidently imitated from the Chinese
_famille-rose_ porcelains of the 18th century.

The finest work appears to have been produced from the 11th to the 14th
centuries; yet so imperfect is our knowledge of what is truly Persian,
Syrian or Egyptian, that we are forced to accept many conventional names
that have perhaps little but custom to recommend them. There is, for
instance, an important class of pottery known, until recently, only from
a few remarkably handsome vases, and once called "Siculo-Arab" because
these few examples had been mostly found in Sicily. This ware is
characterized by its fine quality and its distinguished
ornament--leaf-shaped panels with arabesques