This brief article illustrates some recent finds of early Chinese porcelain recovered from archaeological excavations in Panamá la Vieja. Located at the narrowest part of the Panama isthmus on the Pacific side of the colony, Panamá la Vieja was founded in 1519 (fig. 1). This early port city played an important role in a complex trade route that facilitated the export of silver from the New World to the Old along with an influx of Chinese goods from the Pacific maritime traffic.
Spanish trade in the Pacific waters began in the sixteenth century, when Ferdinand Magellan had claimed the Philippine Islands for the Spanish Empire. The Philippines had been a market for Chinese ceramics since the Tang dynasty (618–906), but after Spain established the trading post of Manila in the mid-1500s, Spanish travelers quickly saw the opportunity to send Chinese porcelain to the Spanish colonies in the Americas. The first Spanish galleon crossed the Pacific from Manila to Acapulco, Mexico, in 1565, but large shipments of porcelain did not begin to arrive until 1573.
The Chinese export porcelain from this period (the late Ming dynasty) is called “kraakware” by twentieth-century collectors. Although evidence of these porcelains was found in Panama prior to the uncovering of fragments in Panamá la Vieja, the fragments discussed in this article were archaeologically recovered in stratigraphic sequences that permit more refined dating in these late sixteenth- to the mid-seventeenth-century contexts.[1]
Figure 2 illustrates a blue-and-white kraak porcelain dish, a typical example of the export ware manufactured in South China between the 1570s and the 1640s. These wares were produced in huge quantities for the export trade, and many authors have tried to posit a chronological evolution for such wares. Fortunately, the excavation of several notable shipwrecks discovered in the last two decades has expanded our ability to date these wares.
In addition to fragments unearthed at the Monastery of the Concepción, this article illustrates finds from the site of a seventeenth-century house that had been occupied by Genoese slave traders.[2] During the period 1662–1671 there was an infirmary for slaves adjacent to this “House of the Genoese,” a three-story house built sometime after 1600.
After Panamá la Vieja was destroyed by fire in 1671—in an unfortunate attempt by the Panamanians to protect themselves from the notorious privateer Henry Morgan—most of the residents moved a few miles to the west.[3] Not everyone with ties to the Spanish colony vacated the city, however—slave traders, among others, returned. Found in association with the slave infirmary is a fragment with kinrande (Japanese for “gold brocade”) decoration (fig. 3). This type of decoration typically has overglaze enamels on the exterior and an underglaze blue trellis border on the rim of the interior. Such pieces were made during the middle of the sixteenth century and probably into the seventeenth century. Although much of the overglaze enamels have worn off, the remaining red enamel with some gold and slight traces of green enamel can be compared with that on the rare intact bowl illustrated in figure 4. The large dish fragment with a duck on it (fig. 5) may also have been associated with the earlier context on the site since that motif was prevalent from the second half of the sixteenth century until well into the seventeenth century.[4] This fragment can be compared with the plate in figure 6.
The two Chinese porcelain bowls with contemporary English silver-gilt mounts illustrated in figures 7 and 9 were originally from the collection of William Cecil, Lord Burghley, who was Treasurer under Queen Elizabeth I. Now part of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s collection, these bowls were made during the Wanli period (1573–1619); the English silver-gilt mounts bear the mark of a silversmith working in London in about 1575–1585.[5] Since there was no direct trade between England and China during the sixteenth century, it is conceivable these pieces of porcelain went to England through privateers, such as Sir Francis Drake, or through trade between the English and the Ottoman Empire.[6]
The bowl in figure 7 illustrates horses galloping along the rim, similar to the horse on the fragment in figure 8.[7] A similar bowl with horses galloping at the rim is in the collections at Burghley House, Lincolnshire, and was reputed to have been presented by Queen Elizabeth to her godchild, Sir Thomas Walsingham, both of whom were financial backers for Sir Francis Drake’s circumnavigation, which began in 1577. As such, they were in effect the owners of part, if not all, of the goods taken in his voyage.[8]
The fragments shown in figures 10 and 11 have decoration on them similar to that on the bowl shown in figure 9, with deer in compartments on the exterior and flowers on the interior. Jessica Harrison-Hall, a scholar of Chinese ceramics, notes that such bowls, made from 1586 to 1613, were found at the San Diego (1600) and the Witte Leeuw (1613) shipwrecks.[9]
The central decoration on the dish fragment in figure 11 shows a deer in a landscape which includes puzzling wheel-shaped motifs, flowers, and debased floral motifs.[10] The wheel-shaped motif originally may have represented rocks but evolved into what resembles the wheel of the law, signifying Buddha’s first sermon in the Deer Park at Sarnath.[11] The intact dish illustrated in figure 13 reveals decoration similar to that in the fragment, with two deer in a landscape with rocks or debased wheels at the lower part of the central scene.[12] The floral motifs include needles on a fir tree, and the branch with leaves closely relates to the branch on the fragment in figure 12. Another dish with a similar decorative scheme was found at the San Diego shipwreck, helping date that piece and similar objects.[13] The bird-on-branch motif appears on the reverse of a comparable dish that Chinese ceramic historian Maura Rinaldi dates 1575–1605.[14]
It should be noted that similarly decorated pieces were made over a long period of time, and it is often through the fortunate recovery of such shipwreck cargoes as those of the San Diego that scholars are able to assign date ranges to pieces. The dish with two deer on it from the House of the Genoese slave traders (fig. 14) is a more schematic version of the piece shown in figure 13 and resembles the circa 1625 dish from the Wanli wreck (fig. 15).
Although kraak pieces generally have alternating wide and narrow panels, the decoration on the fragment in figure 16 is quite different: identical flowers are placed within wide panels, and there are no narrow panels whatsoever. Such rim decoration can be found on pieces recovered from the San Diego shipwreck site, as well as at the site of the Nossa Senhora de Mártires, a Portuguese ship wrecked in 1606 in the Tagus River off Lisbon.[15]
The excavations in Panamá la Vieja provide firsthand evidence of the use and ownership of Chinese porcelain in Spanish colonies at the very early inception of what was to become an important trade for western European countries throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The fragments in Panamá la Vieja must have served as important objects for both function and display. Regardless of how they were used, to Spanish colonials the wares served as reminders of contact with Asia, just as they are reminders to present-day archaeologists and ceramic scholars of that complex trade system.
