ACABADOS SUPERFICIALES DE LAS OBRAS DE HORMIGÓN

Evidence of porcelain in Spain before the settlement of Manila in 1571

Porcelain began to be imported into Spain earlier than into Portugal, long before the Spanish settled themselves in Manila, in 1571. Spanish textual sources and shards excavated at different archaeological sites demonstrate that a few pieces of porcelain reached Spain in the late Middle Ages, most probably as diplomatic gifts, via Eastern Andalusia (Sharq Al-Andalus), the Valencian territory during the period of Muslim rule.120 The earliest textual references to the presence of porcelain in Spain, however,

date to the fourteenth century.121

The next known references to porcelain are found in royal inventories of the beginning of the sixteenth century. The following references, taken from the transcription of the original documents recently studied by Krahe, serve to illustrate the types of porcelain that reached Spain at the time, mostly via Lisbon.122 _{In an}

inventory of the collection of artistic objects in the treasury of the Alcázar (fortress)

the total ceramic finds, including some pieces dating to the eighteenth century. For a discussion and images of the porcelain, excavated between 2002–2010, see Mário Varela Gomes and Rosa Varela Gomes, ‘Escavações Arqueológicas no Convento de Santana, en Lisboa. Resultados Preliminares’,

Olisipo. Boletim do Grupo “Amigos de Lisboa’, II

Série, No. 27, July/September 2007, pp. 76, 79, and 85–86, figs. 5–7; and Rosa Varela Gomes, Mário Varela Gomes, Mariana Almeida, Carlos Boavida, Dário Neves, Kierstin Hamilton and Carolina Santos, ‘Convento de Santana (Lisboa). Estudo Preliminar do Espólio da Fossa 7’, Arqueologia em Portugal. 150 anos, Associação dos Arqueólogos Portugueses, Lisbon, 2013, p. 1059 and 1064, Fig. 1 A. I am grateful to Mário Varela Gomes for granting me permission to include images of the excavated porcelain in this doctoral dissertation.

102 The Franciscan friars also used Portuguese tin- glazed earthenware. Only 17 of a total of 4.000 fragments recovered from the water cistern were identified as porcelain. For more information, see Joana Bento Torres, Quotidianos no Convento de São Francisco de Lisboa: uma análise da ceramic

vidrada, faiança portuguesa e porcelana chinesa,

unpublished MA dissertation, Universidade Nova de Lisboa, September 2011, pp. 78–83, 98 and Appendix E, pp. 417–421.

103 See note 14.

104 For a discussion on these finds and images, see Santos, 2002, p. 55; and Santos, 2003/2004, pp. 29–30, figs. 21–24a.

105 The convent was founded in 1471 by Catarina, Countess of Loulé, daughter of Fernando, 2nd duke of Braganza (1430–1483), in the area of Rossio by the river Lis. The nun community was extinguished in 1880, after the death of the last nun, Sor Joaquina do Rósario. The convent was demolished in 1916, and the Santana market was built on its site. From a total of 86 porcelain shards found at the site, there are 4 dating to the Kangxi and Qianlong reigns of the Qing dynasty. It is worth mentioning the site also yielded shards of Portuguese tin- glazed earthenware plates and bowls with designs imitating Kraak porcelain. Nuns from wealthy noble families, include the daughters of the D. Manuel de Meneses, 5th Marquis of Vila Real, 1st Duke of Vila Real, Governor of Ceuta (1537–1590).

of Segovia, taken in 1503 by order of Queen Isabella I of Castile (r. 1474–1504) (hereafter Isabella I), is listed ‘A bowl of white porcelain with an open filigree foot of twenty-two carats that together with the gold weigh one mark, three ounces and four- eighths’.123 This porcelain bowl, as noted by Krahe, would be the earliest documented

piece of porcelain fitted with precious metal mounts (gold and silver) in Spain, a practice in Europe that not only highlighted the rarity and value of the imported object but also provided some protection to it. An inventory taken in 1503–1504 mentions a gift sent from Lisbon to Isabella I by her daughter María of Portugal, which consisted of ‘a large blue-and-white Ottoman porcelain resembling a basin (bacía) that was given by the Queen of Portugal to our Queen in a white wooden box’. This was given to Violante de Albion, the Queen’s lady-in-waiting, in Medina del Campo on April 28, 1504.124 The fact that this piece is described as Ottoman, argues Krahe,

may indicate that it was imported through Turkey or that it was an early example of Iznik blue-and-white pottery.125 Although it is impossible to ascertain if this piece was

made of porcelain or not, this is the first documented use of the term ‘blue-and-white’. Several pieces described as ‘porcelain’ appear in inventories of the Queen’s chamber taken after her death, but the use of the term is ambiguous. For instance, pieces such as ‘a goblet made of a glass called porcelain, with black and blue leaves of the same [material], without a lid, …’ may have been made of porcelain or glass, as white glass imitating porcelain was manufactured in Europe as early as the end of the fifteenth century.126 _{The pieces described in an unpublished document of 1505 dealing with}

Isabel I’s accounts, held in the archive of Simancas, as ‘Three porcelains that are ewers of the four, [that they had] each with a spout, blue and gilded, with lids, worth one thousand, six hundred and eighty-seven and a half maravedies’, may have referred to

Kinrande porcelain ewers dating to the early sixteenth century, such as those in the

Topkapi Saray in Istanbul.127 Porcelain appears to have been sought after by the high-

ranking nobility at the time, as male and female nobles purchased some of the pieces of porcelain that belonged to the Queen sold to repay debts.128

A Jiajing blue-and-white bowl, known as the ‘Trenchard Bowl’, is said to have been a gift from Philip I of Castile (hereafter Philip I) and Joanna of Castile to Sir

Fig. 3.1.2.1 Blue-and-white ‘Trenchard Bowl’ with English silver-gilt mounts

Jingdezhen kilns, Jiangxi province Ming dynasty, Jiajing reign (1522–1566) Mounts: England (London), hallmarked 1599–1600 Height: 13.9cm; diameter: 23.6cm Victoria and Albert Museum, London

(museum no. M.945–1983)

Fig. 3.1.2.2 Celadon-glazed stoneware bowl with English gold mounts

Probably Longquan kilns Ming dynasty, c.1500 Mounts: England, c.1500–1530 Height: 12.3cm; diam: 16.6cm Ashmolean Museum, Oxford (acc. no. LI1086.1) Lent by New College, University of Oxford

148 Silk, Porcelain and Lacquer Trade in Chinese Porcelain 149

For more information and sketch drawings of the Ming porcelain finds, see Ana Rita Trinidade,

Convento de Santana de Leiria: História, Vivências e Cultura Material (Cerâmicas dos Séculos XVI a

XVIII), unpublished MA dissertation, Universidade

Nova de Lisboa, 2012, pp. 62 and 111–117, and Appendix I, pp. 247–279.

106 Varela Gomes and Varela Gomes, 2007, pp. 79–80. 107 Although the Wucai style of decoration was

developed for the Chinese domestic market, porcelain of this type was exported to Japan and Southeast Asia during the Wanli reign. Harrison- Hall, 2001, pp. 211, 213, 273 and 275; and Christiaan J.A. Jörg, Famille Verte. Chinese Porcelain in Green

Enamels, Groningen, 2011, p. 10.

108 For a discussion and sketch drawings of the shards, see Mário Varela Gomes and Rosa Varela Gomes, ‘Cerâmicas Vidriadas e Esmaltadas, dos Séculos XVI, do Poço-Cisterna de Silves’, Xelb, vol. 3 (1996), pp. 194–200.

109 Published in Queiroz and Manteigas, 2008, pp. 226–230, nos. 39, 41–45.

110 See note 46. These dishes show a somewhat simpler design to that seen on Jingdezhen dishes produced earlier during the Jiajing reign; compare an example from the Casa Museu Dr. Anastácio Gonçalves in Lisbon published in Maria Antónia Pinto de Matos,

A Casa das Porcelanas. Cerãmica Chinesa da Casa-

Museu Dr. Anastácio Gonçalves, Lisbon, 1996, pp.

58–59, no. 10.

111 The shipwreck Nan’ao No. 1 was discovered in December 2007. For more information and images of the porcelain finds from this shipwreck, see Guangdong Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology, ‘2007 Survey and Excavation of the Ship Nan’ao No. 1 of the Ming Dynasty’,

Wenwu, 2011, No. 5, pp. 25–47. A comparable plate

is illustrated in p. 37.

112 Santos Palace is situated on the Rua de Santos-o- Velho in Santos Hill, overlooking the Tigus River. In 1501, King Manuel I made Santos Palace one of his favourite residences. The building was originally a nobility ladies convent of the Comendadeiras. In this royal Lisbon residence, King Manuel assembled part of his porcelain collection, which had been brought to him earlier from India and Malacca. The acquisition of Chinese porcelain must have continued during the reign of Sebastian I, who succeeded to the throne on the death of his paternal grandfather, John III in 1557. After the ill-fated battle of Alcácer Quibir in 1578, when Sebastian I was killed leaving no descendants, Santos Palace was abandoned. In 1589, Santos Palace and all its furnishings were sold to Dom Luis de Lancastre (c.1505–1574), 1st Grand Commander of the Order of Aviz. This transaction was only regularized in 1629, when the Comendadeira

Beatrice de Lancastre obtained from King Philip III (Philip IV of Spain), permission to sell the palace to her cousin Francisco Luis de Lancastre, 3rd Grand Commander of the Order of Aviz (c.1580–1667). The Lancastre family took up residence in the palace and brought their treasures with them. In 1909, after almost tree hundred years of being owned by the Lancastre family, the Palace was sold by one of their descendants to the French government with all its contents. In 1948, it became the French Embassy in Lisbon. A study of the porcelain was carried out in 1981, when the French Foreign Office provided Madame Daisy Lion-Goldschmidt with funds to make a descriptive inventory. The porcelains, untouched since the seventeenth century, were carefully dismounted, cleaned and several were restored. The porcelain dishes and plates had been simply held up by long iron nails turned into form hooks, which were attached to a wooden structure formed by four triangular panels with garlands of scrolling leaves carved in relief and gilded. These panels converged to a central pendent at the top, which was similarly carved and held a few dishes and a rare Jiajing blue-and-white ewer with biscuit

Thomas Trenchard of Wolverton, Dorset, in gratitude for his hospitality after they were shipwrecked off Weymouth, England in 1506 (Fig. 3.1.2.1). However, the bowl’s date of manufacture, and the silver-gilt mounts with a London hallmark for 1599–1600, suggest that the bowl reached England during the reign of Elizabeth I. There is also a celadon-glazed stoneware bowl (probably Longquan) with silver- gilt mounts, recorded in the inventory of New College Oxford of c.1532, which is said to have been given by Philip I to William Warham, Archbishop of Canterbury (c.1450–1532) (Fig. 3.1.2.2). The Archbishop, who crowned Henry VIII of England (r. 1509–1547) and married the King to his brother’s widow, Catherine of Aragón (1485–1536) in 1509, would presumably have regarded this stoneware bowl as a rarity and thus added the mounts before presenting it to New College, where he was Warden.129 At about this time, porcelain appears to have been also sought after

by wealthy individuals residing in other cities of Spain, as sometimes porcelain was left as inheritance to relatives. This is suggested by a notarized document of 1537, which states that Beatriz de Espés, widow of Juan de Lanuza, resident of Zaragoza in northeast Spain, bequeathed ‘four porcelains, two large and two small, mounted in silver’ to her son Ferrer with the strict condition that they ‘could only be left to his own legitimate children’.130

Although Charles V assembled a vast quantity of curiosities and exotic objects imported from overseas, especially from the New World, only a relatively small quantity of them were from Asia. Textual sources indicate that porcelain was used as tableware to serve food and wine, alongside gold cups, during a banquet hosted by Charles V to celebrate the birth of the fifth son of his sister, Catherine of Austria.131

The possessions deposited by Charles V in the fortress of Simancas outside Valladolid were sold off between 1558 and 1560 to pay outstanding debts, when he abdicated in 1555 to enter a monastery.132 The inventories of Charles V’s palace in Brussels, drawn

up in 1545 and 1556, include only two pieces of porcelain. The porcelain, listed at the end of the inventory, is described as ‘Two clay pots called porcelains, greyish or glazed in blue colour with flowers embellished with silver, inside two velvet bags’.133

This porcelain appears again listed at the end of an inventory of the same objects, drawn up at the fortress of Simancas on 22 February 1561.134 _{Many references to}

porcelain, however, are found in the inventory of the household goods kept in the chamber (recámara) of Charles V’s wife, Isabella of Portugal (hereafter Isabella), drawn up in 1539.135 After Isabella, the daughter of Manuel I and his second wife María of

Castile, married Charles V, she became Holy Roman Empress and Queen Consort of Aragon and Castile.Among the pieces of porcelain left in the possession of her lady- in-waiting, Mencía de Salcedo, were ‘… Another chest with its lock and key with five large porcelains and a porcelain jar and its lid / Another two porcelain jars with their lids / Thirty-one pieces of porcelain of all kinds, three of which are earthenware … A box with four porcelains / Another box with three porcelains / A white wooden box, round, with five porcelains … Three white wooden boxes that contain small porcelains from the Indies, spoons and brinquitos [trinkets],136 the spoons with rubies

and adorned with gold and silver’.137 _{Thus is likely that the porcelain pieces that}

belonged to both Charles V and Isabella discussed above reached the Madrid imperial court via Lisbon. A few pieces of porcelain are also mentioned in an account drawn up by Isabella’s treasurer, Francisco Pessoa, dated 1539–1548, listing what he received from the almoneda (auction of the personal property of a deceased individual)138 _{of her}

goods. These included ‘Six plates of porcelain that were sold to lady Stephanie for four

panel decoration, which was placed upside down. The different aesthetic characteristics of the more than 260 dishes and plates were used to create a monumental arrangement on the pyramidal ceiling, which is not only enhanced by the angled panels but also by the perspective of the viewer, who sees it from below. Daisy Lion-Goldschmidt, ‘Les Porcelaines Chinoises du Palais de Santos’,

Arts Asiatiques, vol. 39, 1984, pp. 3–38; Daisy Lion-

Goldschmidt, ‘Ming Porcelains in the Santos Palace Collection, Lisbon’, Transactions of the Oriental

Ceramic Society, vol. 49, 1984–1985, pp. 79–93; Pinto

de Matos, 2011, pp. 136–137; and Canepa, 2012/1, p. 264. For a brief discussion on the Zhangzhou pieces, see Canepa, 2010, p. 67.

113 These are four large and heavily potted dishes of outstanding quality and extreme rarity. These dishes, decorated with large flower scrolls and two of them, with a qilin or a winged dragon, occupy the central space on the row with three large dishes. Early Jiajing examples include a rare dish boldly decorated with a bunch of grapes reserved on scrolling tendrils, a white cavetto and a border of peaches and auspicious symbols. There appear to be only four other examples of this type recorded so far. Among the earliest Kraak pieces is a Wanli reign dish decorated with an unusual motif of a rectangular container, which is similar to that seen on a fragment of a dish recovered from the Spanish Manila galleon San Felipe, which sank in 1576. On its right is another dish with similar rim decoration but depicting a circular container. A saucer dish, dating to c.1595–1610, is finely decorated with deer in a landscape within a panelled rim border with naturalistic scenes. Another saucer dish, dating to

c.1600, is decorated with a grasshopper on a rock beside large flowers, within a border of lobed panels enclosing flowering plants and bumblebees. This latter dish is of very fine quality and bears a heron mark on its base, which has been only recorded in about 50 other Kraak pieces. This dish, together with a fragment of another finely potted Kraak dish with a panelled rim border bearing a heron mark excavated at site CD-1 in front of the Pak Van Bay in Macao, indicates that the Portuguese acquired such dishes in Macao. Published in Cheng, 2009, p. 107, no. 69. The Zhengde period dishes, are flanked at either side by large and heavily potted Kraak

dishes dating to the Wanli/Tianqi reigns, which are decorated with naturalistic scenes, flying phoenixes or bowls filled with flowers, within a panelled rim border.

ducados’, ‘A plate of porcelain sold to the same [person] for twelve reales’, ‘Six small,

broken porcelains that were sold to Artiaga for twelve reales’, ‘To the Count of Nieba three porcelains of the red type that were sold to the Count of Nieba for … iUd (1500

maravedies)’, and ‘A plate of porcelain that was sold to Tello de Guzman for ten reales’.

It is clear that porcelain was very scarce at the time in Spain, as the nobility and other individuals were willing to purchase porcelain at public auctions of the possessions of deceased members of the royal court, even if they were broken in pieces. This scarcity is further demonstrated by the inventory of the belongings of Don Juan Alonso de Guzmán, VI Duke of Medina Sidonia, taken in 1558, which lists only a few pieces of porcelain among numerous imported and costly goods.139

Evidence of porcelain in Spain from the settlement of Manila in 1571 up to 1644

As mentioned earlier, by the time Philip II succeeded his father in 1556, Spain’s colonial empire in the New World encompassed the viceroyalties of New Spain and Peru.140

Trade between New Spain and the Philippines began in 1565, after discovering an eastward route across the Pacific to Acapulco on the west coast of New Spain. The inventories of the ships that traversed the Pacific annually from Cebú, and after 1571 from the Spanish settlement in Manila, to Acapulco between 1565 and 1576, regularly list porcelain.141 _{Large quantities of porcelain were shipped in the early 1570s, as}

indicated by two Spanish galleons that carried among other goods, 22,300 pieces of ‘fine gilt china, and other porcelain ware’ to Acapulco in 1573.142 _{The cargo most}

probably included both fine and coarser porcelain. This is suggested by the discovery of more than 1,600 shards on the desert coast of Baja California in northwestern Mexico, where the Manila Galleon San Felipe was shipwrecked in 1576. The finds include Kinrande, Kraak and other blue-and-white Jingdezhen porcelain, as well as blue-and-white Zhangzhou porcelain and stoneware. Such porcelains were also part of the cargo of the San Agustín, which wrecked in Drakes Bay, California, in 1595 (Appendix 3). These shipwrecks and their respective porcelain finds will be discussed in section 3.3.1.1 of this Chapter.

Fig. 3.1.2.3 Fragment of a blue-and-white bowl from the shipwreck San Pedro (1595)

Jingdezhen kilns, Jiangxi province Ming dynasty, Wanli reign (1573–1620)

National Museum of Bermuda (acc. no. 79:155.003)

Fig. 3.1.2.4 Fragment of a blue-and-white plate from the shipwreck San Pedro (1595)

Jingdezhen kilns, Jiangxi province Ming dynasty, Wanli reign (1573–1620)

National Museum of Bermuda (acc. no. 79:155.309)

Fig. 3.1.2.5 Shard of a Kraak plate from the shipwreck San Pedro (1595)

Jingdezhen kilns, Jiangxi province