Page 69 - Vol_2_Archaeology of Manila Galleon Seaport Trade

36 M. Liu

of Jingdezhen, a large number of Zhangzhou Kiln products were exported and
transferred to the east and west ocean through this new network.
Zhangzhou Kiln was a famous export-oriented ceramic industry rising with the
prosperity of Yuegang in the late Ming and early Qing dynasties. The imitations of
Jingdezhen ceramic artifacts had been main products of Zhangzhou Kiln which
distributed mainly in regions of Pinghe and Nanjing counties of Zhangzhou in
southern Fujian. The main products of Zhangzhou Kiln included not only blue and
white porcelains, but also the enamel-decorated porcelain, plain three-color
porcelain, celadon and other kinds of monochrome-glazed porcelain. The main
types were large plates, bowls, saucers, boxes, pots, bottles, and etc. The decorative
patterns were rich, including the style of heavy strokes drawing line and the paneled
pattern as the Kraak style of Jingdezhen (Fig. 2.5) (FJPM 1997: 69–91). Compared
with Jingdezhen products, the paste and decoration of the ceramic of Zhangzhou
Kiln were much coarser and rasher with low quality. But these imitations of
Jingdezhen ceramic provided the important supplement to export porcelain market
when Jingdezhen’s production decline because of lack of raw materials, ful!lling
great demand of overseas trade after the arrival of European to east Asia.
The porcelains discovered at the Nan’ao No. 1 shipwreck in east of Guangdong
were mainly blue-and-white wares of Zhangzhou Kiln (Fig. 2.6) (Sun 2012: 155–
169). This shipwreck was supposed to set sail from Yuegang seaport in the Wanli
period. A similar style combination of ceramic cargoes was also discovered at
the Wreck 2 of the Royal Captain Shoal in the Philippines (Goddio 1988) and
Manila galleon shipwreck San Felipe in the southern coast of California (Von der
Porten 2001: 1574–1576). Both of their porcelain wares included a group of
exquisite porcelains of Jingdezhen of the late Jiajing and early Wanli period, as well
as abundant of Zhangzhou coarse wares. Dated to a late period, a large number of
Jingdezhen porcelains and Zhangzhou wares characterizing panel pattern decora-
tion were discovered at another Spanish galleon San Diego (1600) in Philippines
(Valdes and Diem 1993) and at the shell mounds resident site of aboriginal Indian
in Drake’s Bay of California (Shangraw and Von der Porten 1981). These ceramic

Fig. 2.5 Porcelains from Zhangzhou Kiln