Throughout this paper one of the biggest themes surrounding Islamic pottery is the desire to imitate Chinese porcelain. Islamic potters were almost forced to imitate, instead of recreate, the Chinese because of the lack of technical knowledge and sufficient materials to fire at high temperatures (Cooper 1972). One of the main problems that Islamic potters faced throughout their time periods was that they did not have the necessary ingredients for making true porcelain because they did not have an essential clay called kaolin. The lack of this clay is a deficiency that practically all Near Eastern countries share. A large part of the history of Islamic pottery making therefore consists mostly of the potters trying to imitate Chinese porcelain,
