Museum accessions.(Brief Article)

At some point, probably in the late fifteenth century a sailing vessel laden with trade ceramics sank in the treacherous waters known locally as the Dragon Sea off Cu Lao Cham Island, in the region of Hoi An, an ancient Vietnamese trading port. Some five hundred years later, in 1993, local fishermen inadvertently started to bring up pieces from the wreck in their nets, and ultimately archaeological and salvage operations recovered more than 150,000 intact objects and thousands upon thousands of fragments. The trove yielded the most comprehensive and precious representation of the early Vietnamese potter's art imaginable, including an enormous variety of forms and all types of decoration and glazes--celadon, cobalt blue, underglaze blue and white, polychrome, and monochrome white. Thirty-six pieces from the group have recently been acquired by the Seattle Asian Art Museum.

At various times during the fifteenth century, officials in China decreed bans on maritime exports to Southeast Asian and other countries, opening the door to the rapid development of ceramics production in Vietnam, which quickly began to supply markets throughout Southeast Asia and the Middle East. The center of production was Hai Duong province in the Red River Delta of what is now North Vietnam. The Hoi An treasure almost certainly originated specifically at a pottery in or near the hamlet of Chu Dau, where wasters of rice bowls identical to those from the wreck have been unearthed. From there, the ceramics were presumably transported by riverboat to the Gulf of Tonkin and transferred to an oceangoing junk, probably bound for Sumatra, Java, Borneo, Sulawesi, or the Philippines, where numerous examples of Chu Dau wares survive, although similar ...