LEGEND has it that in the 13th century,Kublai Khan(1215-1294),who established the Yuan Dynasty(1279-1368),discovered an exquisite kind of handicraft when fighting around Arabia in the Eurasian continent.The war was brutal,but Kublai Khan was so impressed with the craft he found that he spared the lives of the craftsmen and took them back to China.These skilled individuals were then ordered to make the exquisite handicrafts for Mongolian nobles.What they made was cloisonné,an ancient metalworking technique.