A Nanking Cargo Shipwreck Dish, ex-Christie's, ca 1752
This particular plate is a very fine example that somehow managed to survive over two centuries under the sea, essentially unscathed. Shipwreck porcelain comes off the sea floor in a wide variety of conditions, with many pieces utterly destroyed, others cracked and chipped, others whole but encrusted with calcified sea life, and others still surviving intact, but with their glazes eroded and rendered dull from the seawater. But from random luck regarding where a piece may have been sitting within a stack of porcelain, or from how a piece may have been sheltered from the elements by other factors like sea mud, some pieces emerge miraculously unscathed. This is one such example. This dish has a very fine underglaze cobalt blue, a very good glaze that has not degraded at all, and is overall, a very well-executed piece of mid-18th century export porcelain that also, just happened to survive undersea for over two centuries!!!
Size and Condition: This is the second of two such dishes we have. This particular piece is 9 1/8 inches in diameter, 1 inch deep, some very minor fritting to the rim edge, and one small nick visible mostly from the back. Our close-up photo makes it appear larger than it is. Christie’s original auction label to base.