Chinese Blue and White Wares (Pandanan)
Today’s #MaritimeMonday features the Chinese blue and white porcelain that were found in the Pandanan shipwreck, off the shores of Pandanan Island, southern Palawan. The vessel was accidentally discovered by a pearl farm diver, who was looking for a missing pearl basket and instead found stoneware jars at a depth of more than 40 m below sea surface level.
The trade vessel sunk between the middle to the late 15th CE (Common Era) and yielded more than 4,700 objects with a dominant ceramic cargo along with iron, glass, wood, stone, and organic remains. More than 70% of the ceramic cargo came from the kilns of Northern and Central Vietnam. At least 40 pieces of Chinese blue and white porcelain were recovered, among them were dishes, jarlets, and bowls. The most significant of the blue and white porcelain objects is a big bowl dated to Yuan Dynasty Period (1279–1368 CE). It is more than 100 years older than the rest of the cargo, and designated as a National Cultural Treasure. To learn more about the Pandanan blue and white porcelain bowl, please see: https://tinyurl.com/4dvsdawt.
The rest of the Chinese blue and white porcelain pieces were dated to the so-called Interregnum Period (1436–1464 CE) and produced by the kilns at Jingdezhen, Jiangxi Province. This is based on the similarity of the artistic styles of artefacts found in dated Chinese tombs, as well as fragments from the kilns sites at Jingdezhen and excavated pieces from an area near the Ming imperial palace in Nanjing. These wares include dishes with mythical animal themes (unicorns, phoenix, and qilin) and floral designs. The limited quantity of the Chinese ceramics with less than 4% of the ceramic cargo, reflects the scarcity of Chinese ceramics during this period due to the prohibition of maritime trade in China. The substantial presence of ceramics from Vietnam, Thailand, and Myanmar also indicate that these countries filled this Chinese ceramic export vacuum.
The #NationalMuseumPH is now open to the public with limited capacity. You may book your appointment through this website. Monitor our social media pages such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram for further announcements. In the meantime, you may watch the virtual tour of the upgraded ‘300 Years of Maritime Trade in the Philippines’ exhibition here: https://tinyurl.com/300YearsOfMaritimeTradePH.
#ChineseBlueAndWhitePorcelain
Poster and text by the Maritime and Underwater Cultural Heritage Division
© National Museum of the Philippines (2021)
