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The poem inscribed on the ewer reads

眄林皆惕惕, 鴻雁北向飛, 今日是餉日, 早祈雪郎歸

Gazing at the forest, my heart is troubled:

Wild geese have all flown north.

Today is a festival day;

Early, I pray, my young man will come home.

[tr. Irving Lo]

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.