The slide-show shows photos of a pottery collection consisting mostly of low cost (provincial) Chinese pottery / porcelain:
a) Chinese ginger-jars and other pots typically used to store honey. The jar with the blue and milk-white and bottom with blue circle is probably 17th cent. See ref 1 for article on Omani honey
b) Large rice bowls. The "dragonchasing pearl" rice bowls are quite rare and valuable. Origin maybe south east Asia rather than China?
c) Plates (these plates are extremely difficult to date, and some could be older as the time-range indicated (same designs already used during the Ming period)
After the opening of the Suez canal (late 1869) Ceramics and many other goods were increasingly imported from Europe to Zanzibar and Oman, due to a large reduction in the cost of transportation.





Two identical large rice-bowls with "dragon chasing flaming pearl design bought in Nizwa
From south East Asia dated pre 1800.
The pearl is associated with spiritual energy, wisdom, prosperity, power, immortality, thunder, or the moon. The dragon dance movement "dragon chasing the pearl" shows that the dragon is continually in the pursuit of wisdom.
The Chinese dragon dance is often led by a person holding a spherical object representing a pearl. The dragon dance movement

