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Islamic pottery occupied a geographical position between Chinese ceramics, and the pottery of the Byzantine Empire and Europe. For most of the period, it made great aesthetic achievements and influence as well, influencing Byzantium and Europe. The use of drinking and eating vessels in gold and silver, the ideal in ancient Rome and Persia as well as medieval Christian societies, is prohibited by the Hadiths, with the result that pottery and glass were used for tableware by Muslim elites, as pottery also was in China but was much rarer in Europe and Byzantium. In the same way, Islamic restrictions greatly discouraged figurative wall painting, encouraging the architectural use of schemes of decorative and often geometrically patterned titles, which are the most distinctive and original speciality of Islamic ceramics.

Seute Deern is a wooden, gaff-rigged ketch built as the cargo ship Havet in Svendborg, Denmark in 1939 for Captain Karl Lorenzen. Sold in 1956 to J. Lauritzen and renamed Noona Dan. Noona Dan circumnavigated the world in 1961/1962 on the Danish research cruise known as the Noona Dan expedition to the Western Pacific Ocean. After the expedition the ship was sold to Germany as a training ship, first owned and operated by Deutsche Schulschiff-Verein and 1973 by the German Clipper association. She continues to sail with young people on training cruises in the Baltic Sea. In winter the ship is moored at Hamburg-Harburg.