Page 167 - Chinese and japanese porcelain silk and lacquer Canepa

Collection. The other extant piece is a small blue-and-white bowl decorated with de Atocha devastated the merchant community in
258
flower roundels dating to the Wanli reign, which was found in the well of the Convent both Spain and the New World. For a discussion
on these shipwrecks, see John Christopher Fine,
of Saint Clare of Astudillo, of the Order of San Francisco, in Palencia. The convent Treasures of the Spanish Main. Shipwrecked
was founded in 1356, but was later occupied by nuns who belonged to the nobility of Galleons in the New World, Guilford, 2006, pp. 9–43.
It is interesting to note that the ceramic cargo of the
important Castilian families. 259 Tortugas Shipwreck, a navio of the aforementioned
1622 fleet, included a few tin-glazed Blue-on-White
From the textual sources discussed above it is possible to conclude that porcelain Talavera-style dishes decorated in imitation of Kraak
began to be imported into Spain earlier than into Portugal, long before the Spanish settled and other Wanli blue-and-white porcelain, when it
sank off the Dry Tortugas islands in the Florida Keys.
themselves in Manila in 1571, during the reign of emperor Longqing. Archaeological Published in Greg Stemm, Ellen Gerth, Jenette Flow,
Claudio Lozano Guerra-Librero and Sean Kingsley,
finds have shown that a few pieces of porcelain reached Spain in the Middle Ages, most ‘The Deep-Sea Tortugas Shipwreck, Florida: A
probably as diplomatic gifts, via Eastern Andalusia. The earliest textual references to Spanish-Operated Navio of the 1622 Tierra Firme
Fleet. Part 2, the Artifacts’, Odyssey Papers 27,
the presence of porcelain in Spain date to the fourteenth century. The next known Odyssey Marine Exploration, 2013, p. 9, fig. 14.
212 Canepa, 2014/2, pp. 108–109, figs. 5–6.
references are found in royal inventories of the beginning of the sixteenth century, 213 The plate bears the mark jing zhi on its base,
but these are scarce. Most of the porcelain listed in the latter inventories probably which means ‘exquisitely made’. The shipwrecks
La Viga and El Galgo are discussed in Tucker, 2011,
reached Spain via Lisbon. The porcelain listed in royal inventories dating from the late pp. 35–59.
214 The Nuestra Señora de la Limpia y Pura Concepción
sixteenth century and early seventeenth centuries, when the Crowns of Portugal and was part of a fleet of 21 ships that comprised the New
Spain were united, would have been imported into Spain not only via Lisbon but also Spain Fleet. I am indebted to Juan López, Director
Patrimonio Cultural Subacuático, and Francis Soto,
via the viceroyalty of New Spain and Seville. The amount of the porcelain shipped to Underwater Archaeological Commission, for giving
me the opportunity to study the porcelain, including
Spain, however, was very small in comparison with that imported into New Spain. No bags of tiny shards, recovered from the wreck site
documentary or material evidence of royal orders of porcelain has been found thus far. during a research trip to the Dominican Republic in
April 2014. Most pieces are now kept in the Oficina
The appreciation of porcelain (as well as of Chinese silk) in Spain in the sixteenth Nacional de Patrimonio Cultural Subacuático, and
a small quantity is exhibited in the Museo de la
and early seventeenth centuries, unlike in their neighbouring Iberian country of Porcelana, both in the capital city, Santo Domingo.
Portugal, was quite limited. It seems clear that a considerable amount of the porcelain I am grateful to Borrell, Tracy Bowden and Federico
Schad, who participated in the salvage expeditions,
that was imported was destined for the Habsburg royal court. This is attested by for discussing the archaeological finds with me.
For a discussion on the shipwreck and images of
the post-mortem inventory of Philip II, taken between 1598 and 1607, which lists some of the porcelain finds, see Pedro J. Borrel B.,
over 3,000 pieces of porcelain. Although most pieces were tableware, a few appear Historia y Rescate del Galeón Nuestra Señora de
la Concepción, Santo Domingo, 1983; and Tracy
to have had both practical and ornamental functions. As shown earlier, Philip II and Bowden, Quest for Adventure with Tracey Bowden,
Miami, 2004.
his successors continued the long established gift-giving practice of the House of 215 For more information on the attempts to salvage the
Habsburg and supplied their relatives residing at other European courts as well as their cargo of the shipwreck Nuestra Señora de la Limpia y
Pura Concepción, see Borrel, 1983, pp. 33–49.
courtiers with porcelain. It is clear from the appraisals and almonedas (auctions) of the 216 Kraak bowls of this type, but with no moulded
decoration on the cavetto were salvaged from the
belongings of members of the Habsburg royal court, the high-ranking nobility, clergy Hatcher junk, a Chinese junk en route to Batavia that
and wealthy merchants of Madrid, Seville and other main cities of Spain discussed sank in the South China Sea in c.1643. Compare,
for instance, the examples illustrated in Sheaf and
above that porcelain did not rank highest among the most valued objects, whether Kilburn, 1988, p. 40, pl. 46.
217 For an image of a klapmuts recovered from the wreck
imported or local. Precious stones and metals, both gold and silver, fetched the highest site, see Canepa, 2008–2009, p. 67, fig. 4.
prices and thus were considered of more importance than the fine and applied arts. 218 Cup stands modelled with a raised central ridge,
intended to serve wine, were made in porcelain and
Porcelain fetched higher prices only when it was mounted in gold or silver, and it lacquer after silver models for the Chinese domestic
market from the early Ming dynasty onwards.
was appraised very differently according to its shape and decoration. Although the Blue-and-white cup stands together with small,
royal inventories of some of the Habsburg kings, such as that of Philip III, show straight-sided cups with slightly recessed bases
cut with a narrow foot ring, have been excavated
that porcelain was used as tableware (especially for eating fish or drinking consommé) in the Hongwu stratum at Dogmentou, Zhushan in
Jingdezhen. Mentioned in Harrison-Hall, 2001, p. 89,
not only at the court but also when travelling, it seems unlikely that the nobility, no. 2:8 and p. 486, no. 16:62.
clergy or wealthy merchants who could afford a silver dinner set would have switched 219 A mancerina was a platter with two tiers, the upper
part served to hold a coconut or a porcelain cup
to porcelain as their main set. Those who desired porcelain and could afford it containing the hot chocolate, and the lower part
260
to hold the pastries to be dunked into the hot
would have been able to acquire it through a few foreign merchants with important chocolate. As noted by Gustavo Curiel, a document
commercial networks both in Europe and the New World who traded Asian and other written in Mexico City in 1695 mentions that the
Marchioness of San Jorge, Teresa Francisca María
imported goods in Seville, or through private consignments or gifts sent by relatives or de Guadalupe Retes Paz y Vera, owned a chocolate
service for use in the salon de estrado of her house,
personal contacts living in New Spain. consisting of 12 salvers and 16 mancerinas made of
Material from archaeological excavations at secular and religious sites in Spanish silver. Gustavo Curiel, ‘Customs, Conventions, and
Daily Rituals among the Elites of New Spain: The
settlements in the Caribbean and in Spain, as well as from datable shipwrecks of the Evidence from Material Culture’, in Héctor Rivero
Borrel M., Gustavo Curiel, Antonio Rubial García,
Spanish Treasure Fleet that traversed the Atlantic from Veracruz to Seville during the Juana Gutiérrez Haces, and David B. Warren, The
166 Silk, Porcelain and Lacquer
Grandeur of Viceregal Mexico: Treasures from the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, have shown that the majority of the
Museo Franz Mayer, Milan, 2002, pp. 29–30 and porcelain imported into Seville, from where it circulated to other cities, was blue-and-
p. 41, note 15.
220 Some of the bell-shaped cups bear an apochryphal white from Jingdezhen. It seems that some of the Jingdezhen blue-and-white porcelain
six-character Chenghua reign mark on their base. dating to the Jiajing reign bore imperial reign marks, and thus would have been
This resulted in the incorrect dating of the porcelain
recovered from the wreck site in a research paper originally intended for the Chinese imperial court. The Spanish, like the Portuguese,
published by the Universidad Nacional Pedro
Henriquez Ureña, Santo Domingo, in 1992. V. also imported some white-glazed porcelain and Kinrande porcelain. It appears that
Mazo-Gray and M. Alvarez, ‘X-Ray Fluorescence most of the blue-and-white porcelain imported was of the ordinary trade type, but
Porcelain
Ming-Dynasty
of
Characterization
Rescued from a Spanish Shipwreck’, Archaeometry from the turn of the sixteenth century Kraak porcelain became much more prominent.
34, 1 (1992), pp. 37–42. I am grateful to Violeta
Martínez, Museo de la Porcelana – Fundación The blue-and-white porcelain imported ranged from high to low quality. It is not
Violeta Martínez, for providing me with a a copy of surprising that the porcelain imported into Spain is very similar to that imported into
this research paper.
221 For a sketch drawing and a brief description of the Portugal, as the Chinese junk traders would have brought similar porcelain cargoes to
chest and its contents, see Borrel, 1983, pp. 92–93.
Borrel suggests that the silver coins, perfectly Macao and Manila, and the Spanish would also have been able to acquire porcelain
aligned on the hidden section of chest, were from the Portuguese merchants that went to trade in Manila, especially to exchange
brought clandestinely to avoid paying the taxes
owed to the King. silk for silver. By the early 1640s, a few new types of Kraak and other blue-and-white
222 The function of the objects and products depicted
in Pereda’s painting is briefly discussed in Donna porcelain were being imported into Spain, as demonstrated by finds from the shipwreck
Pierce, ‘“At the Ends of the Earth”. Asian Trade Nuestra Señora de la Limpia y Pura Concepción (1641). By this time, the porcelain
Goods in Colonial New Mexico, 1598–1821’, in
Donna Pierce and Ronald Otsuka (eds.), At the imported also included a variety of blue-and-white pieces decorated in the so-called
Crossroads. The Arts of Spanish America & Early
Global Trade 1492–1850. Papers from the 2010 Mayer Transitional style. Some of them were most likely intended for the consumption of
Center Symposium at the Denver Art Museum, hot chocolate, a habit acquired from the Mexicas (the indigenous people that ruled
Denver, 2010, p. 155; and Krahe, 2014, Vol. I, p. 239.
223 Chocolate was the first of the hot beverages (tea, the Aztec Empire) that was well established in Spain in the late 1630s. The cargo
coffee and chocolate) to be introduced to the West.
Conquistador Hernán Cortés (1485–1547) brought also included a small quantity of porcelain decorated with overglaze enamels and of
cacao beans from the New World back to Spain in Blanc de chine porcelain made at the Dehua kilns in Fujian, which demonstrates that
1528 and gradually the custom of drinking chocolate
spread across Europe. Dutch traders first brought the Spanish began acquiring Blanc de chine porcelain about ten years earlier than
tea to Europe in 1610; and Venetian traders brought
coffee a few years later, in 1615. By the 1620s, the previously thought.
taste for hot chocolate appears to have been well It is important to bear in mind that it is virtually impossible to calculate the
established in New Spain. We learn from the English
Dominican friar Thomas Gage (c.1597–1656) that amount of porcelain imported into both Portugal and Spain during the late sixteenth
upon his arrival in Veracruz in 1625 he visited the Prior
of the cloister of St. Dominic, who entertained him and early seventeenth centuries, when the royal Crowns were united under the rule of
and other friars ‘very lovingly with sweetmeats, and the House of Habsburg. Many records referring to the Portuguese maritime trade were
everyone with a cup of the drink called chocolate’
and that ‘his chamber was richly dressed and hung destroyed during the Lisbon earthquaque of 1755. Because the trade in porcelain was
with many pictures…; his cupboards adorned with
several sorts of China cups and dishes, stored within not a Crown monopoly it was carried out by private individuals, who did not disclose
with several dainties of sweetmeats and conserves’. the number of pieces contained in all the bundles, packets, boxes or chests imported
The drinking of hot beverages, particularly tea and
coffee, did not become popular among the English in order to evade paying taxes for all of them.
until the mid-seventeenth century. See, Teresa
Canepa and Eladio Terreros Espinosa, ‘The Trade
of Blanc de Chine Porcelain to Europe and the New
World in the Late 17th and early 18th Centuries
(Part II)’, Fujian Wenbo, September 2014, pp. 2–15;
Thompson, 1958, pp. 33–34; and Krahe, 2014, Vol.
I, p. 154.
224 Protocolo no. 6219. 18 February 1644. Inventory Trade to the Southern Netherlands [3.1.3]
of goods of the Marquis of Cadereita, Lope Diez
aux de Armendáriz y Saavedra, 18 February 1644.
Krahe, 2014, Vol. I, p. 154; and Vol. II, Appendix 3,
Document 9, pp. 151–152.
225 Published in Sjostrand and Lok Lok bt. Syed Idrus, Beyond the Iberian Peninsula, the Habsburg governors, nobility and affluent
2007, pp. 154–155, Serial. No. 3635.
226 Krahe was not aware of the existence of these bell- merchants of the Southern Netherlands acquired porcelain and other Asian goods as
shaped cups at the time she submitted her PhD
dissertation to Leiden University in 2014. Krahe, early as the beginning of the sixteenth century. The earliest documented porcelain is
2014, Vol. I, pp. 239–240 and 246.
227 Published in Sjostrand and Lok Lok bt. Syed Idrus, found among the possesions of Margaret of Austria (1480–1530), the only daughter
2007, pp. 154–155, serial. No. 6028. of Emperor Maximilian I of Austria (r. 1486–1519) and Mary of Burgundy (1457–
228 bid., p. 43. I am grateful to my PhD supervisor,
I
Professor Dr. Christiaan J.A. Jörg, for bringing this 1482), who was appointed the first female governor of the Southern Netherlands in
to my attention.
229 For an image of this jar, see Bowden, 2004, p. 1507, and at the same time she was given guardianship of her nephew Charles (future
8. According to the late Sir Michael Butler and Emperor Charles V) and three of his sisters. Margaret, who ruled until 1515 and
261
Professor Wang Qingzheng this style of porcelain
decoration was well established by 1638. For this again from 1519 to 1530, established a princely court in Mechelen. An inventory
Trade in Chinese Porcelain 167