Santa Cruz and Lena Shoal Shipwreck Pen Boxes
This week on #MaritimeMonday features the Chinese blue and white porcelain pen boxes from the Santa Cruz and the Lena Shoal shipwrecks, Southeast Asian trade vessels that sank in the Philippines around 1488–1505 CE (Common Era). To learn more about the Santa Cruz shipwreck, please see https://tinyurl.com/3z7hxfm4. For Lena Shoal shipwreck, please see https://tinyurl.com/2p9f8rkn.
Part of both shipwreck ceramic assemblages were very limited quantities of Chinese blue and white porcelain pen boxes. They are considered scholarly objects used to store reed calligraphy pens and assorted paraphernalia to write Arabic and Persian. They are thickly potted pieces with covers that have a rectangular form with rounded ends and are painted in dark cobalt blue with a bluish glaze. The interior of the pen box is divided into compartments to fit an inkwell, a porcelain container for sand and a silk or linen thread porcelain container. The exterior side is decorated with lotus scrolls, classical scroll borders, lotus petal panels, floral branches and sprays, and waves.
Pen box shapes are traditionally non-Chinese and may have been produced following Islamic metalworks that began to appear in the 12th century CE in the Middle East and/or Central Asia. As shipwreck objects, these were certainly destined for Muslim scholars and civil servants in the littoral societies of Islamic Southeast Asia, the Indian Ocean, and maybe in the Middle East during the late 15th century CE.
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Text, Poster, and Photos by the Maritime and Underwater Cultural Heritage Division
© The National Museum of the Philippines (2022)
