The central London museum announced late on Wednesday that the Trustees of The Sir Percival David Foundation had gifted the collection permanently to go on public display.

David, who died in 1964, was a British businessman and Sinophile who collected ceramics from Europe, Japan, Hong Kong and China.

His collection had been on loan to the museum since 2009.

Museum chair George Osborne said he was "thrilled by this blockbuster decision" to make the loan permanent, calling it "the largest bequest to the British Museum in our long history".

Colin Sheaf, chair of The Sir Percival David Foundation of Chinese Art, said the donation coincided with the centenary of the businessman's first trip to China, which inspired his love of its art and culture.

He said he hoped it would continue to inspire and educate future generations.

Highlights from the collection include vases from 1351 and a cup used to serve wine for the Chenghua emperor in the 15th century, as well as ceramics made for the Northern Song dynasty court in the 11th century.

Some pieces from the collection will be loaned to the Shanghai Museum in China and the Metropolitan Museum in New York.

The British Museum was founded in 1753 and is one of the most famous in the world, with a collection of about eight million objects.

But like many Western museums, it has come under pressure in recent years to address calls to return items acquired during the British Empire, not least the Parthenon, or Elgin, Marbles.

Last year the museum -- home to the Rosetta Stone -- was rocked by revelations that thousands of artefacts from its collection were found to be "missing, stolen or damaged". Hundreds have since been recovered.

It dismissed a staff member suspected of involvement in what it called "an inside job", and alerted police who have interviewed a person but made no arrests.