The term qingbai, or “clear-white,” was first used by the Chinese in the thirteenth century to describe the hard, thin, white-bodied wares that we call porcelain today. Traces of iron oxide in the glaze, fired in a reduction atmosphere, cause the faint bluish tone that is one of the great attractions of this group of early ceramics, and the lightly incised lines enable the glaze to thicken slightly and allow us to see a delicate overall floral pattern on the clay body of both the bowl and the ewer.

This type of ewer, with its own warming bowl shaped like a lotus that gently envelops its occupant, was first used in the Northern Song period, but it was in the Southern Song that these ewers and bowls reached the high level of refinement made possible by the discovery of new deposits of white-burning clays in the south of China.