Yuan dynasty blue & white wares

[peterp]

A large number of Yuan dynasty items that are on the market today are fakes. Relatively few big items are left in China itself today.

The knowledge of the existence of yuan BW pieces got lost during the Ming dynasty. In the Qing dynasty even the imperial court had no knowledge of the existence of these. Probably, they were assumed to be from the Ming dynasty. Yuan BW wares were only rediscovered during excavations in the 1920s.

In the Yuan dynasty the Mongol rulers of China had little interest in porcelain items. They preferred to use vessels made of metal (silver, gold). Yuan BW wares were mostly made for export. The big, good pieces of that period are now mostly in the Topkapi in Istanbul, and in Iran, where the rulers of those times had valued this item type more and collected them. There are comparatively few big items left in China, now for this very reason, they were exported. Produced were the blue and white items in the kilns of Jingdezhen. Smaller items were exported in considerable quantities  to Southeast Asia, especially today's Java where at the time the thalassocratic kingdoms controlled trade. Those smaller items were predominantly jarlets.
Such smaller items are more likely found in today's Indonesia than the big ones. Therefore, big Yuan BW wares on the market are few and are mostly available via auction only, at fairly high prices.