Why were Islamic inscriptions cast into Chinese bronzes, and also inscribed on Chinese porcelains? Some scholars opine that they were not made for export to the Middle East, India, or Southeast Asia, because they are not found in extant collections such as those from the Ardebil Shrine in Iran and the Topkapi Palace in Turkey. Rather, they served Muslim administrators at the Chinese court, or foreign merchants in China’s ports.1 Other experts have proposed that they were simply fashionable decorations for Chinese clients, the exotic script adding excitement and allure to objects.2 However, whether they were made for Muslim clients or Chinese, these paired censers were luxury products. They were cast from a dense, brass-like bronze and had their surfaces augmented with splashes of gold. This was achieved by fire gilding, in other words by applying gold in the form of a gold/mercury amalgam and then heating the vessel to drive off the mercury. A small amount of gold was left adhering to the base metal since this method was especially suitable for the application of very thin layers.3 The process could be repeated several times to build up layers of gold. Bronzes with gold-splash decoration are highly regarded by collectors.

It is likely that Chinese craftsmen worked from drawings or models to reproduce inscriptions in languages unfamiliar to them. Small mistakes on some pieces indicate their difficulty in transcribing unfamiliar scripts, though the inscriptions on these two incense burners are correct. For this reason, there are a number of Chinese objects bearing similar inscriptions to these two pieces, many of them in the form of incense burners. An almost identical censer in the Asian Art Museum, San Francisco (B62B31), bears the same inscription.5 There are many vessels in different forms with the same inscription, for example one in the David Collection in Copenhagen (accession no. 7/1971).