Chinese Ceramics on the Seabed

With the development of maritime trade, Chinese ceramic wares have been spread all over the world for thousands of years, though lots among them sunk to the seabed due to shipwrecks. These colorful wares brightened the quiet under-water world, and helped to unveil the mysterious world on the seabed which recorded the traces of the flowing of the Chinese porcelain.

A British captain refloated two ships in the South China Seas in 1983 and 1985. One is a Chinese flat-base ship, and the other is a trader of the Dutch East Indian Company on which were loaded 120,000 blue-and-white porcelain wares from the Qianlong's reign. And in 1986 they were auctioned at the Christie's in Amsterdam. And according to the article "Refloatating 'Achi' to begin next month-the sunken treasures will return" in the "South China Seas Daily",  "the ship 'Achi' of the Dutch East Indian Company sinking in the Malay seas ... The sunken ship was loaded with a great number of antiques and porcelain wares from the Ming dynasty..." From 1647-1821, sixty-one ships sank around the Cape of Good Hope. Some of the porcelain wares refloated in 1853 are possibly from the sailing ship "Haarlem" sinking in 1647. Being called "Zhuowan porcelain", they are now in the collection of the British Museum. In 1984, with the help of advanced technology, a group of amateur divers reloaded a great many blue-and-white porcelain wares, such as the bowls with peony decoration, and those with bamboo, landscapes and plants, the plates decorated with geese, lotuses or landscapes or chrysanthemums together with bamboos.

Malacca is an important port at the Malacca Straits where Chinese porcelain wares are oftentimes found. According to the "Business Daily of the South China Seas" of June 10, 1994, over 500 boxes of 23,000 porcelain wares were refloated from the maritime space of Malacca. Among them, three thousand would be showcased at the storage of the maritime museum, and the rest of them would be auctioned at the Christie's. There are blue-and-white, underglaze red, brown designs on white glaze, blue-glazed, yellow-glazed porcelain, coarse glaze on plain white body, and other kinds of porcelain. And according to their functions, they are divided into daily table wares, such as plates, trays, bowls, cups, kettles, jars and pots, and spittoons, cauldrons fu, candlers, sculptures of people or animals. Some of the shapes and forms are of Chinese convention, some are a blending of the Chinese and western styles, and some were ordered by the western clients. Some of the blue-and-white porcelains refloated from "Diana" are recorded in the documents, for example, the oval dish decorated with landscapes and pavilions in underglaze blue from Jingdezhen was named the "Large Western Dish with Designs of the Famous Gardens in Underglaze Blue" in "A Brief History of Trading the Ancient Ceramics" by the Japanese scholar Sakai Takao. Some bowls with designs of double-happiness and plants in underglaze blue which are similar to the same kind of the Dehua bowls were found in the same ship. All the above-mentioned porcelains are valuable in the study of the porcelain history.

Chinese Ceramics in America