Burrell Collection in the context of Glasgow Museums

Hispano-Moresque ware is a style of initially Islamic pottery created in Al-Andalus (Muslim Iberia), which continued to be produced under Christian rule in styles blending Islamic and European elements. It was the most elaborate and luxurious pottery being produced in Europe until the Italian maiolica industry developed sophisticated styles in the 15th century, and was exported over most of Europe. The industry's most successful period was the 14th and 15th centuries.

Around 711, the Moors conquered part of Spain. Over the following centuries, they introduced two ceramic techniques to Europe: glazing with an opaque white tin-glaze, and lustreware, which imitates metallic finishes with iridescent effects. Hispano-Moresque wares use both processes, applying the paint as an overglaze which is then fired again. Lustreware was a speciality of Islamic pottery, at least partly because 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, when Christian medieval elites still normally used metal for both dishes and cups.

A drawing room is a room in a house where visitors may be entertained, and an alternative name for a living room. The name is derived from the 16th-century terms withdrawing room and withdrawing chamber, which remained in use through the 17th century. The term "drawing room" made its first written appearance in 1642. In a large 16th- to early 18th-century English house, a withdrawing room was a room to which the owner of the house, his wife, or a distinguished guest who was occupying one of the main apartments in the house could "withdraw" for more privacy. It was often off the great chamber (or the great chamber's descendant, the state room) and usually led to a formal, or "state" bedroom.

In modern houses, the term may be used as a convenient name for a second or further reception room, but no particular function is associated with the name.