38.
A ‘BLUE AND WHITE’ OVOID JAR AND COVER, GUAN
Ming dynasty, Chongzhen period, circa 1643
31,3 cm high
Provenance: Naples, Villa della Floridiana, Museo Duca di Martina, Placido de Sangro (1829-1891) collection.
inv. n. 3925.
The shape and the decoration of this vase show similarities with pieces recovered from the Hatcher Cargo, a Chinese junk wrecked around 1643 in the port of Batavia (today Jakarta) with its cargo of porcelain destined to the European market through the intermediation of the Dutch East India Company (VOC). The ship – about 25.000 pieces – was discovered in 1983 by Captain Michael Hatcher and sold the next year in Amsterdam by Christie’s (for a similar vase from the Hatcher Cargo, see C. Sheaf – R. Kilburn, The Hatcher Porcelain Cargoes. The Complete Record, Oxford 1988, p. 51, n. 63).
This kind of vase is commonly known as ‘ginger jar’, a definition which derives from the Dutch word confijt. Similar jars began to be imported from 1635 in Holland where they were used to preserve various kinds of products, among them probably also ginger (E. Ströber, «La maladie de porcelaine». East Asian Porcelain from the Collection of Augustus the Strong, Leipzig 2001, pp. 36-37, n. 11, for a vase in the Dresden Porzellansammlung with analogous shape and style of decoration but with different subjects painted into the reserves: the author also remember that the popularity of this kind of vases in Holland is proved also by their presence in a number of still lives by Dutch painters such as Willem Kalf, 1619-1693; a vase with this same decoration is in the same German collection, belonged to Augustus the Strong (1670-1733) (inv. n. PO 7878).
