Museum accessions

Magazine Antiques, August, 2001 by Eleanor H. Gustafson

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 pottery has been found as far east as Japan and as far west as Zanzibar and Egypt.

These ceramics are thought to have been made for everyday use, and while their relationship to Chinese examples is clear, they are in a class by themselves, testimony to the creativity and imagination of Vietnamese artisans. Many of the salvaged wares have underglaze blue decoration, but the charger illustrated at the upper left is one of just a few pieces that are finely painted with poetic landscapes of imaginary places. A more typical genre of decorative motif--animal life--is represented by the covered box in the center, which bears an underglaze image of a bird in flight surrounded by feathers swirling in all directions. Like these pieces, most of the objects from the Hoi An shipwreck bear painted decoration, but a number of them, such as the miniature vase at the upper right, are covered only with a plain dark cobalt glaze. Beautiful by virtue solely of its form and coloring, the vase is an understated testament to the sophistication of its potter

The chest over three drawers at the bottom of the page is likewise a statement of beauty through simplicity. One of two pieces of Shaker furniture recently acquired by the Seattle Art Museum proper, the chest was made in New York State at either the Watervliet or the New Lebanon Shaker community. Its relatively early date is indicated by the thickness of the yellow paint (by 1840, thinner paint was in use) and by the shield-shaped embossed-tin escutcheon. The chest and a chair of about 1830 from the Shaker community in Enfield, New Hampshire, were acquired in conjunction with the museum's important recent exhibition, Creating Perfection: Shaker Objects and Their Affinities.