This overglaze luster-painted tile, with its bold design of a soaring phoenix, a background of cloud bands, and a lotus border, is an excellent example of the Chinese influence on Iranian iconography following the Mongol conquest. As can also be found on the Mamluk Bottle, the phoenix bird is an important Chinese symbol of longevity and came to signify the empress. In Iran the phoenix became conflated with the Persian mythical simurgh. Scrolling cloud patterns and lotus flowers are among the most common decorative motifs in China and have long been used to ornament all the decorative arts.

Tiles bearing the same motifs and presumably produced from the same molds were excavated at Takht-i-Sulaiman in northwestern Iran, the lavishly decorated Ilkhanid summer palace built about 1275. While the phoenix and the dragon (symbol of rain, the seas, and the emperor) were long popular subjects for imperial architecture in China, after the Mongol invasions, they appeared on important buildings throughout the empire.