Page 255 - Chinese and japanese porcelain silk and lacquer Canepa

This shard, as recently noted by Gardiner, relates closely to a plate of c.1575–1600
displayed in the ceiling of the Santos Palace in Lisbon. This porcelain may have
792
belonged to William Claiborne, who patented Baldrup plantation on the Warwick
River in 1625; to Captain Samuel Stevens who acquired the estate in 1632; or to
Richard Stephens and his wife Elizabeth Percy, who married Governor John Harvey
(d. 1646) in 1638. 793
Shards of a Kraak saucer dish were also found at Flowerdew Hundred, another
plantation founded in 1619 by George Yeardley, Virginia’s first Royal Governor, on
the south side of the James River. As noted by McCartney, porcelain is listed in
794
an inventory of the belongings of George Thorpe taken after his death in 1622 at
a private plantation called Berkeley Hundred on the north side of the James River,
which was also founded in 1619. This inventory, taken in April 1634, lists ‘6 litle Fig. 3.3.3.2.1 Fragment of a blue-and-white
pursline dishes’ along a considerable quantity of silver, pewter and wooden objects, wine cup excavated at the Ferryland site,
Avalon Peninsula in Newfoundland
as well as household furnishings and clothing. Thorpe, an Episcopal priest, was a Jingdezhen kilns, Jiangxi province
795
member of the VC and one of the owners of the plantation. Ming dynasty, Wanli/Tianqi reign (1573–1627)
796
© Aaron Miller
As mentioned earlier, the English colonists may have acquired some of the
porcelain discussed above through trade with ships of private Dutch traders that visited 792 For an image of this plate, see Rinaldi, 1989, p. 79,
pl. 54.
Virginia from as early as 1611, just a year before Virginia began growing tobacco in 793 The information on the inhabitants of Boldrup
sizable quantities for commercial export, which came to be the colony’s most important Plantation is taken from Calder Loth (ed.), The
Virginia Landmarks Register, fourth edition, Virginia,
source of income. We know that after the establishment of the WIC in 1621 with 1999, p. 337.
794 Mentioned in Curtis, 1998, p. 24. For more
its monopoly on trade, the Dutch continued to trade in tobacco with the colony of information on this colonial plantation, see James
Virginia and supply it with a greater variety of consumer goods than their own English Deetz, Flowerdew Hundred: The Archaeology of a
Virginia Plantation, 1619–1864, Charlottesville and
ships, and at a more favorable exchange. When the civil war between Charles I and London, 1993.
797
795 McCartney, 2011, pp. 77–78. For a transcription
Parliament broke out in 1642, disrupting shipping between London and Virginia, the of the original inventory, see Eric Gethyn-Jones,
Dutch took advantage of the situation not only by establishing permanent trading George Thorpe and the Berkeley Company: A
Gloucestershire Enterprise in Virginia, Gloucester,
posts in the colony and associating themselves with Virginia’s governing class, but also 1982, pp. 208–210.
796 Robert Brenner, Merchants and Revolution:
by becoming major tobacco exporters. Commercial Change, Political Conflict, and London’s
798
Overseas Traders, 1550–1653, London, 2003, p. 146.
797 Wilcoxen, 1987, pp. 19–20. As Pagan has noted, the
Colony of Avalon [3.3.3.2] Dutch retained a commercial foothold in Virginia
during the 1620s and 1630s despite opposition
Porcelain has also been found at another early English permanent settlement in present- from the English government and merchants
day Canada. Archaeological excavations at the Ferryland site, on the east coast of the from London. For more information, see John R.
Pagan, ‘Dutch Maritime and Commercial Activity
Avalon Peninsula in Newfoundland, yielded a fragment of the base and two body in Mid-Seventeenth Century Virginia’, The Virginia
Magazine of History and Biography, Vol. 90, No. 4
shards from a small blue-and-white wine cup with flame and scroll bands identical (1982), pp. 485–501.
to those found at other English sites in Virginia discussed above (Fig. 3.3.3.2.1). 799 798 The Dutch had ample opportunity to import
porcelain into Virginia in the early 1640s, as in March
According to Miller, the wine cup probably belonged to the founder of the fishing 1643 the assembly proclaimed that ‘It shall be free
and lawfull for any merchant, factors or others of
colony Sir George Calvert, 1st Lord Baltimore (1579/80–1632), who was shareholder the Dutch nation to import wares and merchandizes
in both the VC and EIC from 1609, and Secretary of State in England under James and to trade or traffique for the commoditys of
the colony in any ship or shipps of their owne or
I until 1625. 800 Calvert first reached Ferryland or the Colony of Avalon, as he called belonging to the Netherlands’. Cited in Pagan, 1982,
pp. 491–492. Also see pp. 486–487.
his settlement, in 1627, and the following year he returned to reside there with his 799 The shards were excavated in Area F, Event 334, in
family and forty other settlers. Although Calvert and his family only lived briefly in a refuse disposal located at the base of the 1622
801
defensive ditch to the east of the primary settlement.
Ferryland, a few other porcelain shards of the Wanli reign found in an early seventeenth Aaron Miller, The far East in the northeast: an
analysis of the Chinese export porcelain excavated
century midden have been associated with the family household. These include a base at Ferryland, Newfoundland, unpublished MA
fragment of another blue-and-white cup with a shallow, wide foot ring 802 and four Thesis, Department of Anthropology, Memorial
University of Newfoundland, 2005, p. 10; p. 90, fig.
shards of a small blue-and-white bowl decorated with ruyi-heads (Fig. 3.3.3.2.2). 9.2; pp. 108–109; and Appendix 3, p. 170, fig. 3.23.
803
I am greatly indebted to Aaron Miller for providing
In addition, shards of a small blue-and-white wine cup sketchily painted with me with information and images of the porcelain
excavated at the site.
stylized peach sprays were excavated from a context dating to the second half of the 800 Miller, 2005, pp. 110–111; and Stephen Hornsby,
seventeenth century (Fig. 3.3.3.2.3). Its form and decoration, however, relate closely British Atlantic, American Frontier: Spaces of Power
804
in Early Modern British America, Hanover and
to about 20 wine cups recovered from the Witte Leeuw (1613). There is also a tiny London, 2005, p. 89.
805
254 Silk, Porcelain and Lacquer
blue-and-white shard, possibly from a Kraak plate, excavated from the remains of
the house of the subsequent proprietor of the settlement, Sir David Kirke (d. 1654),
who renamed it the Pool Plantation. It is likely that the small quantity of early
806
seventeenth century porcelain found at Ferryland was brought over from England
when the wealthy Calvert and Kirke colonists arrived to this small and isolated fishing
colony, perhaps as symbols of their elite social status in the motherland.
807
To sum up, the information from English written sources as well as porcelain
recovered from English shipwrecks that sank while en route from England to Virginia,
and from various sites at the colonies of Virginia and of Avalon, indicate that only
small quantities of porcelain reached the earliest English settlements in the New World
in the early seventeenth century. Most of the porcelain, as it also occurred in the
Spanish and Dutch colonies in the New World, was blue-and-white from Jingdezhen
ranging from fine to rather low quality. The porcelain excavated not only shows close
similarities to finds made in England, but also to finds from two Dutch shipwrecks
which sank in the early 1610s, the Witte Leeuw (1613) and the Banda (1615). There
is some porcelain that relates to finds from the Hatcher junk (c.1643). It seems clear
Fig. 3.3.3.2.2 Shards of a blue-and-white that some of the porcelain was imported into the English colonies via England, most
bowl excavated at the Ferryland site, Avalon
Peninsula in Newfoundland probably brought among the personal belongings of the early colonists, but other may
Jingdezhen kilns, Jiangxi province have come from trade with private Dutch merchants that traded mainly in slaves and
Ming dynasty, Wanli/Tianqi reign (1573–1627) tobacco in Virginia. The porcelain that was brought to the colonies from England
© Aaron Miller
would in turn have been acquired via the Dutch Republic or as booty taken from
Fig. 3.3.3.2.3 Fragment of a blue-and-white Spanish ships and shipwrecks. The porcelain finds are associated with households of
bowl excavated at the Ferryland site, Avalon well-to-do English colonists, and thus would probably have served as symbols of their
Peninsula in Newfoundland
Jingdezhen kilns, Jiangxi province elite social status.
Ming dynasty, Wanli/Tianqi reign (1573–1627)
© Aaron Miller
801 Calvert purchased a portion of the grant of land of
the Avalon Peninsula from Sir William Vaughan, who
had founded and settled two English colonies near
the present location of Ferryland in 1617. Calvert
sought to benefit from the rich fishing off the coast of
Newfoundland and the inter-Atlantic trade between
Europe, the New World and the West Indies. In 1621,
he dispatched Captain Edward Wynne and eleven
other men to begin construction of the settlement.
A large ‘Mansion House’ was built a year later, which
came to be the home of the Calvert family. Miller,
2005, pp. 11–12.
802 Excavated in Area F, Event 367. Ibid., p. 112, fig. 10.5;
and Appendix 3, p. 172, fig. 3.28.
803 Excavated in Area F, Events 363, 432, and 481. Ibid.,
p. 113, fig. 10.6; and Appendix 3, p. 198.
804 Excavated in Area G, Event 545. Ibid., pp. 114–115,
fig. 10.8; and Appendix 3, p. 171, fig. 3.25.
805 Van der Pijl-Ketel, 1982, pp. 161–162, no. 3.10.1.
806 Excavated in Area F, Event 464. Miller, 2005,
Appendix 3, p. 213, fig. 3.86. After the harsh winter
of 1628–1629, Calvert wrote a letter to King Charles
I informing his intentions to leave Ferryland and
establish himself in Virginia. The Calvert family
continued to own the Avalon Colony until 1637, when
Charles I granted the Island of Newfoundland to Sir
David Kirke. The following year, Kirke dispossessed
Calvert’s governor and established Ferryland
as the principal settlement of Newfoundland. A
dispute for its ownership between the Calvert and
Kirke families lasted until the third quarter of the
seventeenth century. James A. Tuck, ‘Archaeology
at Ferryland, Newfoundland’, Newfoundland
Studies 9, 2 (1993), pp. 294–295. Until now, the Kirke
house is the only dwelling that has had ownership
attributed. Miller, 2005, p. 113.
807 Ibid., p. 136.
Trade in Chinese Porcelain 255