the ca mau shipwreck what it tells us ab

8/18/2019 The CA Mau Shipwreck What It Tells Us Ab

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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;


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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-


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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.

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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.


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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].

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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.

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