Dish. Stoneware painted in underglaze blue, polychrome enamels and gilt. Vietnam, Lê dynasty, ca. 1480-1500. Museum number: FE.10:1-1987. Copyright: © V&A Images. All Rights Reserved

The kilns of northern Vietnam produced a range of high-fired stoneware ceramics. At their height in the latter half of the fifteenth century, these rivalled the Chinese wares of Jingdezhen. Two strong styles had emerged over the preceding couple of centuries: an indigenous style, reflecting forms and functions associated with Vietnamese lifestyles, and a style following, to varying degrees, Chinese models. The latter were produced largely for South-East Asian and West Asian export markets, where they were traded in competition with Chinese wares. In some more distant markets they may also have been traded to less discerning clients as Chinese wares.

Vietnamese potters were quick to respond to shifts in demand and readily emulated Chinese forms and decorative motifs. The shape of this broad serving dish, for instance, was originally produced in Chinese porcelain for use in communal dining in the Middle East and the painted design - of a Buddhist lion among clouds surrounded by trefoils panels - is likewise Chinese in origin. The close emulation of Chinese ceramics suggests that some of the potters may have been expatriate Chinese, who are known to have settled in Vietnam to escape social disturbances and restrictions on foreign trade at home. Many dishes of this type have been excavated from residential sites in west Java and central Thailand, and enamelled wares featured prominently among those recovered from the Chu Lao Cham cargo (offshore from Cham Island, Hoi An), shipwrecked off the coast of central Vietnam in the late fifteenth century.