Antique Chinese Blue White Swatow Plate

Antique Chinese Blue White Swatow Plate

AGE: – 1822 A.D.
CONSTRUCTION: – Porcelain
HEIGHT: – 2.5cm
DIAMETER:– 18.5cm
#4143 PRICE: – CONTACT

Antique Chinese Blue White Swatow Plate with Stylized painting depicting a mythical creature on the interior from the Tek Sing shipwreck.

After reading Hursburgh’s book written in 1848 with reference to the sinking of the Tek Sing cargo ship in the South China Sea, Michael Hatcher, a salvage expert started his search for the Tek Sing. The wreck was eventually discovered in 1999. Its cargo of over 350,000 pieces of porcelain bound for the South East Asian market was brought up from the depths for all to see.

The Tek Sing translated means “True Star”, was a large trading junk, weighing over 1000 tons and 165 feet long. It departed from Amoy in Southern China carrying the largest quantity of porcelain of any known wreck of the time destined for Indonesia. Like so many other Chinese cargo ships such as the Binh Thuan named after the area in which it sank off the coast of Vietnam in 1608, also carrying a load of blue and white Swatow ceramics and other utilitarian items, also destined for the South East Asian market where its cargo would have been distributed throughout South East Asia.
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