thickly potted in the form of a range of five mountain peaks on a waisted base. The rest is painted in underglaze blue with two medallions containing an Arabic inscription, reading al-qalam aqbalu min kul shay’in (the pen takes precedence over all things), reserved against a scroll ground. The mountains are emphasised by simple vertical lines and the base is decorated with ruyi scrolls. The underside of the base is pierced with two holes and bears the six-character mark of the Zhengde Emperor within a double square, and of the period. The glaze has a characteristic greenish-blue cast.

A nearly identical rest, formerly in the Seligman collection, is illustrated in Harrison-Hall, Ming Ceramics in the British Museum, no. 8:4, pp. 193–4, where it is noted that “Mountain-shaped desk furniture was popular among the literate, providing a world in microcosm for contemplation.” See another example, without the two large apertures in the base, in Lee, An Exhibition of Blue-Decorated Porcelain of the Ming Dynasty at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, no. 105.

Garner discusses these so-called Mohammedan wares in “Blue and White of the Middle Ming Period” and notes that there are two types of pen rest: one, bearing the simple inscription “pen rest”, illustrated by an example from the Percival David Foundation (pl. 19a); and the second, bearing the inscription of our rest, also illustrated by an example in the Percival David Foundation (pl. 19b).

The group to which this rest belongs, namely imperial-marked, heavily potted, underglaze blue porcelain with Arabic or Persian calligraphy, was not made for export but was most probably used by literate Muslims at court: Harrison-Hall illustrates a group of such ceramics, ibid, 8:3–11, pp. 192–9.