IMA has one of the largest comprehensive collections of ceramics from the southern city of Changsha, Hunan Province.

Changsha ceramics were shipped over 1,000 years ago to places as distant as Japan, Philippines, and Egypt making them perhaps the earliest trade ceramics.

Changsha ceramics are the earliest underglazed painted ceramics in China's long tradition of glazed pictorial ceramics.

Changsha ware has not been found in Chinese tombs, but it has been found in areas where foreigners lived.

Some elements of decoration, such as arcs, poetic inscriptions and stripes were rare before this time in China and also existed on contemporary Islamic ceramics.

It is not clear which country's art influenced the other's.