8/18/2019 The CA Mau Shipwreck What It Tells Us Ab
1/7
8/18/2019 The CA Mau Shipwreck What It Tells Us Ab
2/7
Fig 1 Six Chinese export porcelain bottom: the pear-shaped teapots have
teapots and a wine pot, ca. 1723-30. one hole at the base of the spout and
Top :
the Chinese Imari fluted, pear- a steam vent on the cover.
lIade in
shaped teapots have one hole at the base
Imp er ia l C hina
p.
119,
lot ,B3, Courtesy
of the spout and no steam vent on the Sotheby s, Amsterdam,
cover;
middle:
the pair of melon-shaped
teapots have one hole at the base of the
spout and a steam vent on the cover;
8/18/2019 The CA Mau Shipwreck What It Tells Us Ab
3/7
SHIRL Y M LON Y MU LL R
Revelations of the a Mau Shipwreck
hinese Export Porcelain Teapots on the usp
This article presents teapots incorporating cutting edgepractical advances found in the
same shipwrecked cargo with pots that do not exhibit them. This clearly demonstrates
for thefirst time that both types of teapots were made simultaneously. Previously this
could only be a matter of conjecture.
A Chinese junk fully laden with cargo was plying the western trade route between
Guangzhou (Canton) and Batavia (Jakarta) sometime between 1723 and 1735, when
in her course along the coast of Vietnam she met a dramatic end. The most likely
cause of her destruction was fire, which escalated into an inferno, as evidenced by
piles of cast-iron woks that fused into a block of metal and several stacks of ceramics,
including teabowls, that melted into pillars of porcelain.f Piracy, a bolt of lightning
during a severe storm, or even a clumsy cook in the galley could have ignited the
fire, and the overloading of a cargo of heavy metallic objects and ceramics must have
contributed to the doomed vessel s final voyage to the depths of the South China Sea
about ninety miles south of Cap Ca Mau in southern Vietnam. Whatever precipitated
the wreck, which was discovered by Vietnamese fishermen in 1998, the so-called Ca
Mau cargo tells the story of the development of Chinese export porcelain teapots dur-
ing the first decades of the eighteenth century, the early years of the golden age of
the China trade.
During the reign of the Yongzheng emperor (1723-35) Chinese export por-
celain teapots were still largely Chinese in inspiration, in both shape and decoration.
It was not until the mid-eighteenth century that the forms or their decoration were
largely modeled on European prototypes. Before the Yongzheng period the standard
teapot had a single opening on the interior where the spout joins the body (thereby
allowing the tea leaves to accumulate in the spout, clogging it) and no perforation in
the cover to release the steam and allow the intake of air to facilitate pouring. While a
small hole for a steam vent began to appear on Chinese export porcelain teapot covers
as early as the late 1600s,4 it was not uniformly present until the 1730s. At the same
time teapots began to be made almost consistently with three small perforations or
strainer holes on the interior body at the base of the spout, which developed as a logi-
8/18/2019 The CA Mau Shipwreck What It Tells Us Ab
4/7
cal feature in the early years of the eighteenth century. By 1735 the newly improved
model with the perforated spout base and vented cover became the standard model
for all shapes of Chinese export porcelain teapots.
Significantly, the Ca Mau cargo contained teapots not only of the earlier
traditional type but also those in several different stages of innovation. Encapsulated
in the wreckage of one ship, these teapots represented a significant change in teapot
production. Showing both the absence and presence of these two utilitarian develop-
ments, indicating that tea vessels at this moment were on the cusp of modernization,
their variety confirms the challenge that the Chinese and the Europeans faced in
their attempts to produce entirely functional and attractive tea-serving vessels for the
West.
6
8/18/2019 The CA Mau Shipwreck What It Tells Us Ab
5/7
Figures 1 and 2a b illustrate this
point.
Figure 1 all six teapots have a
single hole at the base of the spout but
only four have a steam vent on the cover.
By contrast the two teapots in Figures
2a b have three straining holes at the
base of the spout and a steam vent on the
cover. This second group of pieces shows
greater sophistication in construction than
those in Figure 1 even though they were
all part of the same cargo. Further and
Figs 2a b Nine Chinese Export
porcelain tea wares ca. 1725-35.
Both the pear-shaped teapot Fig. 2a
and the spherical teapot
Fig. 2b
have
three perforations at the base of the
spout and a steam vent on the cover.
Made in Imperial China
pp. 240 and 242, lots 1074-1086 and
1087-1094, respectively. Courtesy
Sotheby s Amsterdam.
8/18/2019 The CA Mau Shipwreck What It Tells Us Ab
6/7
more obvious dissimilarities between these two groups of teapots include their shapes,
which range from fluted pear and melon to plain pear and spherical, and their patterns
and styles of decoration.
These disparities in form, internal construction, and decoration suggest that
these teapots not only were produced at different potting centers but most certainly
did not represent the fulfillment of a single company order. The coexistence of more
advanced models with those of a preexisting type most likely resulted from the amal-
gamation of the supply of wares transported to Guangzhou from various kiln sites
at which the ceramists-the potters and painters-were dependent on instructions
transmitted by their masters, who in turn had received their orders from the European
supercargoes and their Chinese agents through drawings, prints, actual models, and
linguistic interpreters, an exchange in which time, comprehension, and inevitably eco-
nomics played significant roles. It is no surprise that the kiln masters at unrelated sites
made their teapots differently, depending on their understanding of, and willingness
or even ability to accommodate, the necessary innovations required by their current
Western instructions.
While these observations are consistent with those described in previous dis-
cussions of this subject, the discovery and analysis of the Ca Mau cargo confirms that
neither the Chinese porcelain producers nor the Asian and European consumers made
a sudden break with tradition when the functional innovations appeared. Instead, all
types and forms of teapots continued to be made and exported to Europe and other
equally receptive markets over the first third of the eighteenth century, a theory that
heretofore was only a matter of conjecture.
Shirley Maloney Mueller a member of the American Ceramic Circle Board of Directors
is an independent scholar specializing in Chinese export porcelain. She lives in Indianapolis
Indiana. Her e mail [email protected].
8
mailto:[email protected]:[email protected]:[email protected]:[email protected]:[email protected]:[email protected]:[email protected]:[email protected]:[email protected]:[email protected]:[email protected]:[email protected]:[email protected]:[email protected].
8/18/2019 The CA Mau Shipwreck What It Tells Us Ab
7/7
OT S
1. Nguyen Dinh Chien,
The Ca JI1au Sh ipwreck
1723-35
(Hanoi: Ca Mau Department of Culture
and Information and the National Museum of
Vietnamese History, 2002), p. 90.
2. The stacks of fused teabowls, which had been
packed meticulously in pinewood barrels, have
been referred to as sea sculptures ; for examples,
see
JI1ade in Imperial China: 76 000 Pieces of Chinese
Export Porce la in from the Ca JI1auShipwreck circa
1725, Sotheby s, Amsterdam, January 29-31, 2007,
pp. 43,153 and 169, lots 86, 551, and 702.
3. The salvage operation of the approximately
80-by-26-foot vessel, conducted between 1998
and 1999 by a Vietnamese diving and excavation
company working collaboratively with the Ca
Mau Provincial Museum, produced a wealth of
interesting artifacts, including wood, stone, and
textile fragments, and 2.4 tons of metal objects,
from which emerged the earliest dated pieces
in the wreck: copper coins issued during the
Kangxi emperor s reign (1662-1722). The cargo,
however, was predominantly ceramics, and
130,000 pieces were rescued: stoneware from
Guangzhou, blanc de Chine from Dehua, and
biscuit, blue-and-white, Imari, Batavian ware,
and enameled porcelain from Jingdezhen and
other Chinese potting centers, of which the latest
dated pieces were thirty-three blue-and-white
bowls and tea bowls with Yongzheng four- and
six-character reign marks (1723-35), examples
of which were included in ibid., pp. 50-51, lots
109-11. Additionally, there were blue-and-white
wine cups bearing the 4-character mark
Ruo She n
zhe n cang
meaning In th e collection of Ruoshen,
a mark normally used during the Kangxi period
(1662-1722); see The Journey, the Fire and the
Salvage, in ibid., p. 8. While the precise date of
the junk s final voyage is unknown, it is these
marked pieces that help date the shipwreck to the
years 1723-35, and most likely to ca. 1725-28, the
last years before the Dutch East India Company
reentered the direct porcelain trade between the
: ( etherlands and Canton in 1729; see Christiaan
A. [org, The Ca Mau Porcelain Cargo, in ibid.,
p.19.
4. Shirley Maloney Mueller, Lifting the Lid:
Early Chinese Export Teapots,
Transactions of the
O riental Ceramic Soc ie ty
71 (2006-7): 89-93.
5. Shirley Maloney Mueller, Eighteenth-Century
Chinese Export Porcelain Teapots: Fashion and
Uniformity,
American C eram ic C ircle 10urnal13
(2005): 5-16.
6. Shirley Maloney Mueller, 17th-Century
Chinese Export Teapots: Imagination and
Diversity,
Orienta tions
36, no. 7 (2005): 59-65;
Mueller, Eighteenth-Century Chinese Export
Teapots ; a nd Mueller, Lifting the Lid.
9
Top Related