Page 247 - Chinese and japanese porcelain silk and lacquer Canepa

Figs. 3.3.1.2.1a and b Shards of a Zhangzhou
dish and bowl with overglaze enamel
decoration excavated in front of the Palacio
de Justicia, Lima
Zhangzhou kilns, Fujian province
Ming dynasty, Wanli/Tianqi reign (1573–1627)
© Juan Mogrovejo
Fig. 3.3.1.2.2 Fragment of a Kraak dish
excavated at an old colonial house, now the
Museo de Sitio Bodega y Quadra, Lima
Jingdezhen kilns, Jiangxi province
Ming dynasty, Wanli reign (1573–1620)
Museo de Sitio Bodega y Quadra, Lima
Fig. 3.3.1.2.3 Fragments of a blue-and-white
plate excavated at an old colonial house, now
the Museo de Sitio Bodega y Quadra, Lima
Jingdezhen kilns, Jiangxi province
Ming dynasty, Wanli reign (1573–1620)
Museo de Sitio Bodega y Quadra, Lima
Opposite page
Fig. 3.3.1.2.4 Fragment of a Zhangzhou blue-
and-white plate excavated at an old colonial
house, now the Museo de Sitio Bodega y
Quadra, Lima
Zhangzhou kilns, Fujian province
Ming dynasty, Wanli/Tianqi reign (1573–1627)
Museo de Sitio Bodega y Quadra, Lima
A number of shards of late Ming blue-and-white porcelain were recently found
during excavations of one of the walls of an old colonial house, now the Museo de Sitio
Bodega y Cuadra, located in the city’s main square. These include several fragments
736
of Kraak porcelain, which formed part of plates with continuous naturalistic borders
similar to examples recovered from the San Diego (1600), dishes with panelled borders
(Fig. 3.3.1.2.2), cups of the type known as ‘crow cups’, and bowls with spotted or
white deer surrounded by foliage and wheel motifs, similar to that excavated at the
former Dominican convent in Oaxaca (Figs. 3.3.1.1.23 and 3.3.1.1.24). A fragment
of a Jingdezhen blue-and-white plate is decorated with dragons at the centre and
rim (Fig. 3.3.1.2.3). There are also fragments of a blue-and-white bowl decorated
with stylized chrysanthemums, of a bowl with crane medallions interspersed by ruyi
clouds, and of a bowl with a central roudel enclosing Shou Lao. There is also a blue-
and-white fragment, possibly of a bowl, which is decorated with Chinese characters.
In addition, the site yielded a fragment of a Zhangzhou blue-and-white plate with
736 The excavations that began in 2003, and undertaken
phoenix within a border of bracket-lobed panels reserved on a scale pattern ground again in 2010, yielded shards of ceramics from Peru,
(Fig. 3.3.1.2.4), similar to a shard excavated at Moneda Street in Mexico City, which Panama and China. I am greatful to Claudia Prado,
archaeologist of Chile, for bringing these finds to my
relate to finds made at the Wanyaoshan, Dalong and Erlong kiln sites in Wuzhai, Pinghe attention. I am indebted to Miguel Fhon, Director
of the Museo de Sitio Bodega y Quadra, Lima,
county (Appendix 2). 737 for providing me with information and images of
There have been also a few accidental finds of porcelain shards in Lima. These the porcelain recovered at the site. The porcelain
is discussed and some of it illustrated in Miguel
include a shard of a finely painted Kraak dish with a panelled border excavated at Fhon Bazán, ‘El comercio con china a través del
desentierro de menaje colonial (Casa Bodega y
Bolivia Street, a shard of a Zhangzhou blue-and-white dish decorated with broad Cuadra, siglos XVI-XVIII)’, in Richard Chuhue, Li Jing
brushstrokes excavated from a context dating to the last quarter of the seventeenth Na and Antonio Coello (eds.), La Inmigración China
al Perú. Arqueología, Historia y Sociedad, Lima,
century at Camana Street (Fig. 3.3.1.2.5), which relates to finds made at the Erlong 2012, pp. 23-38.
737 Published in Fujian Provincial Museum, 1997, pl. 71,
kiln (Appendix 2), and a shard that most probably formed part of the rim of a bowl fig. 1, pl. 74, fig. 1 and pl. 85, fig. 1.
246 Silk, Porcelain and Lacquer
decorated with red and yellow overglaze enamels with lotus flowers and pearl strings
with tassels, which relates to fragments of bowls recovered from the shipwreck San
Felipe (1576). These latter Lima finds are now all housed at the Intituto Riva-Agüero. 738
Excavations at a site located two blocks to the east of the main square of colonial Lima,
known as the house of Osambela, which formed part of a Dominican monastery from
the mid-sixteenth century to 1807, yielded shards of plates and small cups, which were
most probably of Kraak porcelain. One of the Spanish literary figures of the time,
739
Lope de Vega (1562–1635), in his comedy Servir a señor discreto implies the interest
in porcelain in Lima when he presents the character of Don Silvestre as a Spanish
returning to Madrid from the New World, who is bringing for his wife ‘a thousand
things of China, that to be sold/ come to Lima’, and among them ‘some pieces of
porcelain, make / silver jealous, if they are plates’.
740
In northern Peru, a few shards of Kraak porcelain were found during recent
excavations at the site of the colonial town and church complex Magdalena de Cao
738 Kuwayama, 2009, pp. 170–171, figs. 11, 10 and 8,
respectively. The Zhangzhou shard is also published Viejo in the Chicama Valley, which was occupied from 1578 to about 1780. They
in Canepa, 2010, p. 62, fig. 12. For the San Felipe appear to have formed part of a plate or dish with a panelled border (Fig. 3.3.1.2.6) and
fragments, see Kuwayama, 2009, p. 170, fig. 9; and of a small bowl or cup of the type known as ‘crow cup’ (Fig. 3.3.1.2.7). The church
Von der Porten, 2011, p. 39, Type VI.
741
739 The finds are discussed but not illustrated in Isabel
Flores Espinoza, Ruben Garcia Soto, and Lorenzo complex of this tiny coastal re-settlement was established and run by the Dominican
Huertas V., Investigación Arqueológica-Histórica Mendicant Order. A number of porcelain shards were found in a rubbish heap
742
de la Casa Osambela (o de Oquendo)-Lima, Lima,
1981, p. 43. The authors described the decoration of within part of a former temple compound in Chucuito, a town located northwest of
the pieces as with ‘birds, flowers and conventional Lake Titicaca in the south Peruvian highland. The finds at this town, also associated
designs’ arranged ‘in horizontal bands’. Mentioned
in Ross W. Jamieson, Domestic Architecture and with the Dominican Order who began to build churches and monasteries there in
Power. The Historical Archaeology of Colonial
Ecuador, New York, 2000, pp. 194–195. 1539, provide further material evidence of both the interest of the clergy in acquiring
740 Cited in Javier Portús Pérez, ‘“Que están vertiendo
743
claveles”. Notas sobre el aprecio por la ceramica en porcelain and its wide distribution within Peru.
el Siglo de Oro’, Espacio, Tiempo y Forma, serie VII, Porcelain from both Jingdezhen and Zhangzhou circulated to the northern
6, 1993, p. 272. Also see, Coll Conesa, 2007, p. 128.
741 I am grateful to Jeffrey Quilter, William and Muriel regions of the viceroyalty. A small number of shards have been excavated in the
Seabury Howells Director, Peabody Museum of
Archaeology & Ethnology, Harvard University, old city of Panama, now known as Panama La Vieja, founded by the Spaniards in
for providing me with images of the porcelain 1519 on the Pacific coast of present-day Panama. This colonial port city played an
excavated.
742 For more information on this archaeological important role in the Spanish trade route used to export Peruvian silver to Spain, but
site, see Jeffrey Quilter, ‘Cultural Encounters at
Magdalena de Cao in Early Colonial Period’, in was abandoned when the English privateer Henry Morgan destroyed it in 1671. 744
Matthew Liebmann and Melissa S. Murphy (eds.), The Jingdezhen finds at this archaeological site, declared a World Heritage Site in
Enduring Conquests: Rethinking the Archaeology of
Resistance to Spanish Colonialism in the Americas, 2003, include shards of finely potted Kraak saucer dishes, plates and bowls, dating
745
Santa Fe, 2011, pp. 103–126. Mentioned in Krahe,
2014, Vol. I, p. 55. to the Wanli reign. These include shards decorated with lotus-petals outlined in blue
746
743 The author does not give any information regarding identical to those recovered from the Portuguese shipwreck Santo Alberto (1593). 747
the type or decoration of the porcelain. Harry
Tschopik, ‘An Andrean Ceramic Tradition in The ruins of the convent of nuns of the Concepción yielded shards of dishes with
Historical Perspective’, American Antiquity, vol. 15,
1950, pp. 204 and 509. Mentioned in Kuwayama, continuous or panelled borders, as well as of bowls decorated with deer surrounded
2009, pp. 165–174.
744 Shulsky, 1998–1999, p. 84. by foliage and wheel motifs similar to those recovered from the San Diego (1600) and
745 For further information on this site, see Juan G. the VOC shipwreck Witte Leeuw (1613) and those excavated in Lima, and of bowls
Martín and Beatriz Rovira, ‘The Panamá Viejo
Archaeoligical Porject: More than a Decade of with a rim border of flying horses. The latter two finds also relate to the Wanli
748
Research and Management of Heritage Resources’, bowls from Burghley House discussed earlier (Figs. 3.2.2.9 and 3.2.2.5). A rim
749
Historical Archaeology, Vol. 46, 3, 2012, pp. 16–26.
746 Published in Shulsky, 1998–1999, pp. 90–1, fig. 7. shard shows a similar panelled border to pieces recovered from both the San Diego and
747 Mentioned in Canepa, 2012/1, p. 269.
748 The shards are published in Pomper, 2008, p. 9, the Portuguese shipwreck Nossa Senhora dos Mártires (1606) (Fig. 3.1.1.15). Shards
750
fig. 2; and Linda Rosenfeld Pomper, ‘Early Chinese have also been excavated from the site of a house built sometime after 1600, which
Porcelain Found in Panama’, in Robert Hunter (ed.),
Ceramics in America, Hanover and London, 2012, p. had an infirmary for slaves adjacent to it during the period from 1662 to 1671. The
34, fig. 8, p. 36, figs. 10-12, and p. 37, fig. 16. For the
Witte Leeuw finds, see Van der Pijl-Ketel, 1982, pp. finds that most probably date from an earlier occupation of the house include a shard
129, 153 and 187.
749 Published in Pomper, 2008, p. 9, fig. 2. of a bowl with traces of overglaze enamel and gilded decoration on the exterior and a
750 Pomper, 2012, p. 37, fig. 16. crosshatch diaper border on the inner rim in underglaze blue, thus of Kinrande type,
751 Both published in Ibid., p. 32, figs. 3 and 4,
respectively. similar to bowls recovered from the San Felipe (1576) and to an intact example in the
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