a comparative survey in the influences of chinese pottery on the timurid & safavid periods of iran

china is one of the oldest and most important countries in the world that has had an important role in the process of pottery production. especially chinese potters have had an inimitable skill in production of porcelain wares. although impress of chinese pottery on iran returns to the early periods after islam but during timurid and safavid periods this impress is more greater especially in making and decorating the blue and white wares . in these periods regarding to growth of economic and cultural relations between iran and china, at first chinese potteries were imported to iran and then iranian potters imitated them and made similar examples. regarding to this fact that timurid and especially safavid periods are periods of coordinating the chinese method with iranian style, survey and analogy of differences and similarities of chinese pottery impress in these periods can play an important role in identifying changes and evolutions of iranian decorative resources. unfortunately regardless the importance of the matter, until now has not done any exhaustive research on this matter, hence this research intends to do this survey through some typical examples of porcelains in these periods. according to the findings of research, impress of chinese pottery on timurid and safavid periods was not the same and regardless of exterior similarities it has been very different in many factors of making and decorating. also diversity of safavid pottery with influence of china has been more and celadon and gamboron wars were produced alongside blue and white wares. although celadon wars were prevalent in timurid period but no celadon ware was produced in this period. it seems that timurid kings prefer to use excellent jade wares instead, that they believe have antitoxic nature. economic purposes of safavid kings have been another factor of diversity of china wares in this period. probably decorating of a group of these wares completely as china motifs has rooted in these economic purposes. coincide with safavid period, china wares had a good market in european countries and with exporting of theses wears, china’s government of ming acquire great advantage in this way. accordingly making similar porcelain wares for exporting to other countries was a tempting idea for safavid kings especially for shah abbas the great. detection of great amount of these porcelains in southern ports of iran as siraf and hormoz with signature of iranian potters demonstrates this claim. another different between timurid and safavid porcelains is the more transparency and more chromatic in motifs and background of safavid ones. in the safavid period many of pottery centers produced porcelains in different parts of iran as mashhad, isfahan, kerman and yazd, but in timurid period just eastern pottery centers as mashhad, neyshabur, samarkand and probably varamin produced porcelains. but the most important difference between timurid and safavid porcelains is about motifs. because in timurid porcelains, background of decoration is reclusive and in safavid ones is compact. finally, we must know that the impressibility of china’s pottery has been selective in theses periods.