Lot Essay
The wares discovered in the early 1980s in the ‘Hatcher Cargo’, named after the Captain who made the discovery, now serve as important historical documents for the development and global trade in 17th-century Chinese porcelain. The cargo of the ship, which sank sometime in the years between 1643 and 1646, included some 25,000 pieces of porcelain, mostly blue and white wares from Jingdezhen, but also examples of celadon wares, Dehua wares, polychrome wares and provincial blue and white wares. Several thousands of these were sold in historic sales at Christie’s Amsterdam, in 1984 and 1985.