The Pottery War

When Japanese Shogun Hideyoshi invaded southern Korea as part of an unrealized invasion of China, his forces raided villages for potters with knowledge of advanced Chinese ceramic technology. This action greatly bolstered the Muromachi era of blossoming Japanese ceramic art. Hideyoshi’s invasion is sometimes called the Pottery War.

But of course anytime we use the word “war” we should understand the true nature of that word. In this instance, it meant villages razed, families murdered, people ripped from their ancestral homes and forever enslaved on foreign shores.

A closer look reveals Hideyoshi’s maneuvers as part of a much broader war, including the Portuguese swath of destruction across the Indian Ocean that initiated Europe’s China Trade era along with ensuing Dutch and English piracy on the open seas against Portuguese porcelain traders. Or the ascendency of Delft during a time of civil war in China that closed European access to export porcelain.

But also consider the implosion of the Egyptian Fatamid Caliphate which ejected tin-glazed pottery (and potters) into the Mediterranean world. Or the Christian conquest of Spain which brought that same maiolica to Italy. Or maiolica’s spread through central and eastern Europe by anabaptist Habens fleeing religious persecution. Or Counter-Reformation ravages that led fleeing stoneware potters to Germany’s relatively quite Westerwald district. Or the seditious act of making redware during the lead-up to the American War of Independence. Or virtually everything to do with Mexican maiolica. Etc. etc. etc… If one includes the machinations of today’s mining industry in its quest for cobalt, copper, and other minerals useful to potters, this war can be understood as never ending.

None of this offers a terribly flattering perspective when considering the works of today’s many talented ceramic artists. But there it is – another of those rare moments when pottery history echoes the words of The Jefferson Airplane’s vocalist Grace Slick way back in 1969: “Everything we do either makes noise or stinks.”

These words are not intended as a diatribe against making pottery. Far from it. Rather, we potters should know the full measure of our chosen field. Doing so provides us an intimate appreciation of the immense gift and privilege inherent in the words “standing on the shoulders of giants,” ie; the sacrifice of so many who gave so much so we can do all the things we do.

Don’t shy away from this collective past. Learn from it. Build from it.

A Thousand Years of Linguistics

caveat: the following train of thought happened entirely after the fact.  The plate shown here resulted purely from a confluence of design ideas, time constraints, and physical limitations.  Thus it ever was for the potter…

If an efficient way to destroy a culture is to destroy it’s language (or simply kill off it’s  population), then a good way to honor a culture is to learn it’s language (and leave the people  be) – likewise for a culture’s artistic heritage.  But a culture’s visual language can take on a curious life of its own while traveling through the ages.

So, let’s talk delft.  Delft is a creole ceramic expression.  What began in the Arabian peninsula as a blue decorated tin-glazed response to white Chinese porcelain traveled back to China and then sprayed out in various forms, blanketing the globe.  Each stop along the way sprouted whole new styles of expression (like delftware), even as local potters freely drew from what came before.

How cool it would be to trace this language by following a single image or decorative device along it’s entire historical arc!  By seeing that image express change and/or constancy in the hands of an Arabian, Chinese, Indian, Yemeni, Persian, East and North African, Turkish, Spanish, Italian, French, Dutch, English, Irish, or Mexican potter.  Maybe curators, collectors, or scholars could identify such an image.  I can’t.  The big picture is too sprawling.

I’ll have to do like the old potters did and make my own ‘little picture.’  This one begins with a collision of two motives – to paint a fish (thus joining the ranks of fish-painting potters), and to wrap my head around an ‘Italianate’ delftware border pattern – combined with a diminishing inventory of blank plates as the clock ran out before a show.

Floating in the background were a 12th century Yuan Dynasty export porcelain bowl intended for the Indian Ocean trade, an early Dutch plate possibly made by an immigrant Italian faience potter, an obsession with Southwark floral imagery that creeps into every unguarded corner when I decorate, my brush and stick learning curve, a vague possibility that I may be related to early Delft potters, and a healthy dose of repetitive muscle strain.

Can one respectfully interpret the range, spirit, and boundaries of a historical style while still telling a unique story?  Who knows?  On the other hand nothing the potter makes exists within, or comes from, a vacuum.

The tale I offer goes something like this: “Here’s me wandering along in the language of pottery history.”

Save

How to Survive a Shipwreck

Despite Hollywood’s glamorization of sunken treasure ships, few galleons sank during the lucrative China Trade era.  But on January 3, 1752, the Dutch East India Company (VOC) ship Geldermalsen went down near the straights of Malacca en route from Macao, China to its home in Rotterdam, The Netherlands.

At sunset a reef tore the Geldermalsen’s keel apart.  The surrounding waters were shark infested.  Most sailors then couldn’t swim.  Miraculously, several crew members made it to shore.  But piracy was rampant in those waters, and the survivors were strangers in a strange land.  So even more miraculously, they evaded capture and returned home.

Their trial began two months later.  It was VOC policy to charge any crew who abandoned their ship with “gross treason.”  A guilty verdict meant death.  Fortunately for the hapless crew, they were let off.

Fortunately for us, their ship was discovered 233 years later with most of the 150,000 pieces of porcelain on board intact.  Buried under a blanket of tea.  When combined with the VOC’s scrupulous archive of invoices, this find offers a priceless record of 17th and 18th century China Trade porcelain.

The VOC was one of the first international trade cartels.  As such, they cared only for profit (ie: volume vs. fancy, difficult to pack items).  Huge returns were made on teacups alone.  Ships could carry over 100,000 teacups in a single load, with room to spare for other orders.  Teacups could be densely packed because they didn’t have handles.  Only chocolate cups did until around 1750.

To fill these massive orders, some factories in Jingdezhen were entirely geared toward European designs.  Enameling workshops popped up around European trading posts in Canton and Macao to quickly decorate plain porcelain – a Chinese version of cheap Chinese knock-offs of up-scale Chinese products.

East Indiaman sailors were allowed small personal purchases of more elaborate work on the side, in quantities corresponding to rank, as compensation for relatively poor wages.

During the Trade’s heyday, porcelain generally functioned as the ship’s ballast.  Above that went bales of tea.  The best tea went in lead-sealed crates to preserve freshness.   (During America’s China craze, “tea chest lead” was a prized source of glaze material for redware potters.)

The Geldermalsen’s load was typical: simple teacups, bowls, plates, etc.  But hardly any teapots.  The salvage crew didn’t mind, though.  After sifting through tons of decayed tea to get to the porcelain, most said they’d never drink tea again.

Recovered cargo from the Geldermalsen.

Reading:

The Geldermalsen, History and Porcelain. CJA Jörg. Kemper Publishers/Groningen, The Netherlands.  1986.

China-Trade Porcelain. John Goldsmith Phillips.  Harvard University Press/Cambridge, MA.  1956.

Technorati Tags: china trade,porcelain,Dutch East India Company,Hollywood,sunken treasure ships,teacups,Jingdezhen,Geldermalsen