JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.. British Institute of Persian Studies is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Iran.Speculating on the complex relationship between Chinese and Near Eastern ceramics, one is irresistibly reminded of the title of one of Swinburne's novels, Love's Cross-Currents. If hypnotic fascination, blind adoration and abject imitation be any of the symptoms of Love, then Love it certainly was. The behaviour of lover and beloved-reversing the roles, incidentally, from time to time-provides us with the spectacle of the confrontation of two major civilizations, China and Islam, at the opposite ends of Asia. The cross-currents, the result of a heightened sensitivity to each other, have been the focus of increasing attention during the past few years. No one has done more to foster this than Basil Gray, and the object of the present study is simply to add fuel to the fire that he has already lit.1 Whilst broad outlines have been established for the development of Chinese and Islamic ceramics, much work still remains to be done refining chronology and investigating the interaction of Near and Far Eastern styles. In recent years a large quantity of Chinese porcelain has been found in Syria, and that country now emerges as an important factor in any study of Chinese influence in the Near East. This is not the occasion to survey the numerous problems presented by this Chinese porcelain in Syria, but it does offer the opportunity to publish a number of pieces of particular interest, and to examine how the Chinese material made its impact on the design of Near Eastern pottery.2 Apart from the patterns, the major preoccupation of both Near and Far Eastern potters was the use of cobalt blue underglaze decoration on a white body; the success of the Chinese potters in refining imported cobalt ore and using it to paint on porcelain gave them a significant advantage. One can imagine the frustration of the Islamic potters, faced with a flood of imported ware of superior and inimitable quality; the irony lies in the fact that it was Islamic potters who first developed the use of cobalt blue for decoration. It was the genius of the Chinese to appropriate the idea and apply it to the already-established manufacture of fine white porcelain at Ching-te Chen and furthermore, to identify the Near East as the market most likely to appreciate the new product. The extent to which the Chinese potters designed their wares to appeal to foreign taste is still under debate. Suffice to say, that whilst it is obvious that the design of some of the new shapes indicates a concession to Near Eastern utility, the increasing amount of early blue-and-white found in China itself (not to mention the David ...