This food storage jar, decorated with flowers, would originally have had a flat ceramic lid. Slip—a thin layer of watery, refined clay covering the gray stoneware body—provided a smoother, whiter surface for the painted design. Kilns in China’s northern Henan, Hebei, and Shanxi Provinces have produced similar wares from the 10th century up to the present day, now more decorative than indispensable utilitarian ceramics