It was several centuries before these designs were adapted by Chinese potters, via their earlier adoption in metalwork; indeed an isolated gilt-bronze cup with a vine scroll comes from the 5th-century Northern Wei, probably influenced by metalwork from the West, and more abstracted or geometrical scroll designs appear earlier in Chinese art. The paeony seems to have become very fashionable in China during the T'ang dynasty, and often replaced the lotus flower. By the Yuan dynasty plant scroll designs became very important in painted pottery. In the Islamic world the external influences were initially mainly from their Byzantine and Sasanian predecessors, but later, especially after the Mongol conquests, from Chinese designs, especially in pottery, which themselves had developed from the original Buddhist importation to China.