When the Great Khan picked up a piece of armor that his arrow could not pierce, he uttered in Mongolian to the artisan who made it, "Ah, you--Yeke Uran!" The artisan was greatly honored for this title, for he knew that the khan was referring to him as a great artisan.

The Mongols admired refined craftsmanship. When the Mongol armies conquered large parts of the Eurasian continent, they took the artisans they captured and placed them in art and craft workshops in various areas. For this reason, local techniques and styles spread far and wide as artisans of different cultural backgrounds influenced and interacted with each other. For example, the techniques of silk weaving and papermaking in China spread west as gold weaving techniques and astronomical knowledge from the Central Asia area spread into China. In this period of widespread cultural fusion, innovation in the arts and crafts was as great as the influence that it would have on later generations.

High culture was traditionally maintained in China by the scholar-official class, but the refined literary pursuits of cultivation and leisure also influenced the educated members of Mongol and other ethnic groups in the Yuan dynasty. However, in terms of arts and crafts, the establishment of the National School and academies across the land inspired a revivalist style in the production of bronzes and ceramics. Furthermore, with a rich supply of jade at its source, Chinese jade craftsmen and Central Asian gold artisans were also able to combine their creative energies under the Mongols to produce intricate openwork jade.

Vivid and colorful ceramics became the focus in pottery. Chun ware featured cooper-red haloes of glaze, Tz'u-chou ware featured peacock-blue glaze from the Middle East covering ceramics with black flower designs, and Ching-te-chen potters developed underglaze blue and underglaze red ceramics. These dynamic styles differ greatly from the pristine monochrome glazes works appreciated in the upper classes of previous periods. More importantly, these ceramic styles along with deeply carved lacquer wares and colorful cloisonne reflect important trends that would take place in post-Yuan arts and crafts.

China under the Mongols witnessed an expansion in land and sea commerce. Numerous caravans traveled along extensive land routes and ships traveled the seas. Many of the commercial products that they carried have long since disappeared, but ceramic shards have been recovered to serve as testimony to art and trade in the Mongol era. Shards from the Pescadores generously lent by the P'eng-hu Bureau of Culture testify to the commercial routes that once passed by Taiwan in the Yuan dynasty under the Mongols.