This article first appeared in Antiques to Vintage Magazine. Written by Elizabeth Cheung and edited by Julie Carter.
Nothing excites the imagination quite as much as the idea of hidden treasure. Bars of gold, antique jewels and lost art... such tales have fascinated dreamers and treasure hunters for years. Shipwreck porcelain, a niche interest among collectors for many years, is now enjoying a revival, and decades after the Hoi An Hoard discovery these pieces are finally re-entering the spotlight. BILLY ROBERTSON and his research partner ELIZABETH CHEUNG shed some light.
After years of colonisation and a series of bloody wars, Vietnam was in tatters. Ceramics were largely forgotten; in fact, all knowledge of historical kilns had been lost. Knowledge and interest in Asian ceramics were focused on Chinese and Japanese art. Only in the 1960s did Dr. Roxanna Brown, the world’s leading authority of Southeast Asian ceramics, discover that museum pieces long thought to be Chinese were in fact produced in Vietnam.
A superb Annamese vase in the Istanbul Topkapi Saray Museum sparked a chance inquiry by Makoto Anabuki in 1983, then Secretary of the Japanese Embassy in Hanoi, which brought this academic matter to national attention in Vietnam. Did these kilns still exist? If so, where? From 1986 to 1991, excavations determined the Chu Dau kiln locations and revealed they were of a scope and quality hitherto unknown to have existed outside of China.
Yet where were the ceramics? Excavations only turned up faulty examples; intact pieces were few and far between, squirrelled away in museum or private collections.
The answer was strewn along the Vietnamese coastline. For as long as they could remember, local fishermen near Hoi An would wake to find shards of pottery on the beach. Then in the 1990s, a chance discovery led to fishermen filling their nets with a different, far rarer catch. Their discovery led to unscrupulous dealers quite literally raking the seabed for treasure, and by doing so nearly destroying one of the greatest archaeological finds in modern history. The Vietnamese government intervened but they needed scientific equipment and archaeological expertise. They found both in Ong Soo Hin and Mensun Bound, leading to a multinational crew being assembled of more than 160 divers, seamen, archaeologists and workers.
Finds such as the Geldermalsen, which sank in 1751 with its lucrative Nanking Cargo, led salvagers the world over to head for the seas. Ong Soo Hin was one such dreamer. The Malaysian-Chinese owner of SAGA, a Singaporean marine salvage company, had caught the treasure bug, buying one of the 126 gold ingots from the Nanking Cargo. Dr. Mensun Bound, who had just made his name excavating the 600BC Giglio Wreck, had just been named the director of Oxford University’s Maritime Archaeological Research and Excavation unit. This unlikely team was about to pull off an almost impossible feat, for the so-called ‘white gold’ of the Dragon Sea was located in one of the most dangerous stretches of the South China Sea. Named for the ferocity and frequency of their storms, countless ships had wrecked off the Da Nang headland.
At back: Serving dish of unusual size and design from the Hoi An Hoard, hand painted with bird motif in cobalt glaze. Some crazing and staining, diam 23.5cm, $3500. From left: 15th century large bowl with unusual green glaze of unusual size from the Hoi An Hoard. Fair antique condition with fade to glaze and light crazing. 7.5cm dia. X 5cm high, $980. 15th century lidded dragon motif trinket bowl from the Hoi An Hoard with cobalt glaze. Fair antique condition with fade to glaze and small chips to rim. 7.5cm dia. x 5cm high, $880. 15th century lidded trinket bowl from the Hoi An Hoard. White unglazed dragon motif in relief. Fair antique condition with fade to glaze and small chips to rim. 6.5cm dia. x 5cm high, $880. 15th century parrot and peach figural brush washer from the Hoi An hoard. Extremely rare shape and style. Good antique condition with crazing and small spots of wear. Washer dia. 6cm. Approx 9 x 9cm length and width, 4.7cm height, $2600. 15th century large bowl in cobalt glaze of unusual size from the Hoi An Hoard. Fair antique condition with fade to glaze and light crazing. 9.5cm dia. X 7cm high, $1200
Imagine a large Chinese-style junk c.1450-70AD, approximately 30 metres long and 7 metres wide. These South China Sea trading vessels were built using teak at several sites around the Gulf of Thailand, primarily sailing the Tonkin-Ayyuthaya trade route. Slowly sailing home, on its deck were 30 large stoneware jugs which would have stored provisions. Laden with over 250,000 pieces of ceramics, top-heavy and weighed down, this last stretch of the journey would prove fatal.
This precious cargo would effectively become an albatross around the captain’s neck and mesmerise Ong and Bound centuries later. The sheer weight of the Hoi An Hoard would pin the ship to the seabed over 70 metres deep.
This excavation required unprecedented levels of support from the Vietnamese government. Backed by the Prime Minister and the Minister of Culture, the Vietnam Salvage Company (VISAL) was formed. Together with Ong’s SAGA and Bound’s Oxford marine archaeology unit (MARE), it was "the deepest, full-scale archaeological excavation ever attempted" (as noted by Frank Pope, a member of MARE who oversaw the Hoi An Hoard recovery). Logistics included three barges, three deep-ocean tugs and two gunboats. The excavation took four years and ended up costing US$14 million - between US$50,000 to US$65,000 a day. In a move hearkening back to the days of the Spice Route, the Vietnamese Navy was deployed to ward off pirates.
Divers would work around the clock at depths of 70 to 82 metres (230-270 ft), and lived in special chambers for months at a time. They dived in two separate teams, working overtime shifts that spanned 12 hours underwater. Life-support technicians monitored them around the clock; any slip and it could mean an instant gruesome death via ‘explosive decompression’.
Time and time again, winds would whip the sea into a frenzy, violently bouncing the diving bell off the seabed. If the towlines snapped, if the bell lost its moorings, there was nothing anyone could do. Once locked inside the pressurised chamber, the divers were at the ocean’s mercy. And even in calm seas, conditions were brutal. Nitrogen narcosis, the seabed’s arsenic seeping through their skin. Above all, the knowledge that the chilling pressure of the ocean was an ever-present, inescapable threat. Even aboveboard, typhoons would toss the ships around like leaves. During Typhoon Leo (1999), the barges were at one point a mere fifty feet from each other. Just one more wave and the ships would have been “ripped open like a tin can” (Pope).
In Bound’s account, out-of-season storms were just as brutal. "The ship stirred, the anchors tangled, and slowly it began to edge over on its beam end. Grown men were crying. They were down on their knees praying. One man was rigid with fear.”
After multiple renowned wrecks, interest in maritime salvage was at an all-time high but it was not without its downfalls. One could argue a second great era of piracy had begun. As Frank Pope pointed out, “A salvage without archaeological consideration was one thing; illegal plunder is quite another.”
15th century lidded elephant motif trinket bowl from the Hoi An Hoard with cobalt glaze. Fair antique condition with fade to glaze and marine encrustation to bottom. 6.5cm dia. x 5cm high, $880.
15th century Annamese lidded trinket bowl from the Hoi An Hoard. Unusual tri-coloured glaze with gilt rim and accents. Fair antique condition with loss to glaze and small chips to rim, $880.
With Dr. Bound at the helm, far greater care was taken with the Hoard and the wreck site than with typical salvage operations, with divers at other wrecks simply shovelling porcelain into baskets. Indeed, one article referred to the Geldermalsen’s salvage as its “Second Destruction”.
As such, the Hoi An Hoard recovery effort was unique in being led by VISAL, SAGA and the Oxford Maritime Archaeological Research and Excavation unit (MARE). Before and since, these provenance labels represent the only time a commercial salvage operation was conducted in Asian waters with governmental support and any organised attempt at archaeological record or site preservation.
The Hoi An Hoard remains the largest, most complete example of 15th century Vietnamese ceramics. South East Asian wares had long been considered a ‘poor cousin’ to Chinese ceramics. And yet surviving Chu Dau examples, even before the Hoard’s discovery, were in collections of the highest standards. One such example is the Bei Annam cup in the collection of the Nagoya branch of the Tokugawa shogunate. Not only rulers, they were arbiters of taste in the rarefied social atmosphere of Edo; only pieces that exemplified their aesthetic ideals would be used in their tea ceremonies. Most surviving pieces were found in eastern Java, where the wealthy Majapahit kingdom ruled for centuries; and collections of the Iranian and Ottoman imperial households.
In the early 15th century, Vietnam as we know it did not exist. It was formed via several principalities who warred amongst themselves. The Cham, who had ruled the local spice routes for centuries, found themselves threatened by Dai Viet, and by the time of the Later Lê dynasty, had been subsumed almost entirely. Dai Viet, the precursor of modern Vietnam, was ruled by lords with ambition and strategic thinking. Their desire to participate in the lucrative spice and ceramics trade would cause them to become a major player in the region.
As the Ming Dynasty in China flourished, so did the Ottoman Empire and the small but rich kingdoms of the Levant and Africa. Connecting them all were vast and intricate routes; the Silk Road on land, the Spice Route on the oceans. Beyond spice or silk, a Pottery Road would form along the Malay Archipelago, and Vietnamese ceramics became a keystone for trade through the fabled Spice Islands and beyond.
Lidded trinket bowl in cobalt glaze with loosely hand-painted mountain and landscape scene. Fair antique condition with slight fade to glaze. Lid has fused after centuries underwater. 7.5cm dia. x 5cm high, $750.
Yet just as the Ming Dynasty with its unprecedented treasure voyages had reached the zenith of power, the Chinese empire abruptly withdrew foreign contact. The Lê dynasty, fresh from their fight for independence, seized their chance. And so began the Vietnamese Renaissance, a great flourishing of artistic expression after one thousand years of wars and vassal-dom. As imperial edicts forced Chinese potters to halt exports, rulers of the Lê dynasty intended the Chu Dau kilns to be Vietnam’s answer to Jingdezhen; this was a technically sophisticated, well-organised state-backed export industry designed to compete with Chinese wares - and so they did.
But the lords of Dai Viet and the artisans of Chu Dau did not mean to simply fulfil commercial interests. They intended to secure a legacy for their people. Vietnamese artisans were not merely succeeding a tradition of Zhangzhou ware or Swatow export ware, but rather forging a separate art form. With unique glazes, Red River Delta clay and even cobalt sourced from Iran, it was an entirely different style. It was celebrated then and now for its illustrative nature and expressiveness of form that had been suppressed in the Imperial kilns of China.
In the Hoi An Hoard, not only playfulness can be seen but also technical virtuosity. The polychrome enamels and illustrative motifs in blue and white form were unlike anything seen in Chinese art.
The Chi Choe bird, as depicted on a charger, is a wholly Vietnamese motif. Another example would be the mountainscape scene, a classic motif in traditional Chinese art that has been reinterpreted by Vietnamese artisans to depict their own landscape. Even phoenixes and parrots more closely parallel the native birds of Vietnam, evoking “the bush-fowl or peacock, a creature featured in Vietnamese poetry to evoke a sense of homeland and national pride” (Guy, 2018). And yet sadly, in the 16th century the Chu Dau kilns were lost in the flames of war.
Bud vase in cobalt glaze from Hoi An hoard. Fair antique condition with fade to glaze and small chips to rim. 7.5cm dia. x 5cm high, $660.
Unique items within the Hoi An Hoard were carefully preserved among Vietnamese national museums. To help recoup salvage costs, excess inventory was dispersed through the venerable auction house Butterfield’s; the only time pieces from the Hoi An Hoard were salvaged and brought to auction in a legitimate chain of provenance.
As post-war Asia comes to terms with its past, its ongoing search for self-determination has led to a new-found appreciation for South East Asian ceramics among many collectors. And in fact these ceramics were always intended to be a source of national pride and prestige. This ceramic collection from Vietnam’s Golden Age may well prove a new cultural anchoring point. After 500 years resting on the seabed, the Hoi An Hoard has not only regained the light of day, but also its place in history.
All items illustrated are available from Cache Antiques in Sydney. Call Billy or Elizabeth on 0424 404 791.
https://bunka.nii.ac.jp/heritages/detail/52455 (Bei Annam cup) https://www.waddingtons.ca/discovering-the-hoi-an-hoard/ https://traffickingculture.org/encyclopedia/case-studies/hoi-an-shiwreck/ https://www.academia.edu/37943420/_The_Hoi_An_Cu_Lao_Cham_Shi pwreck_Cargo_and_Asian_Ceramic_Trade https://www.jstor.org/stable/25616201 http://thingsasian.com/story/hoi-hoard-part-one-excavation
Pope, Frank. Dragon Sea : a true tale of treasure, archeology, and greed off the coast of Vietnam. 2007, Orlando : Harcourt, Inc.