A COLLECTION OF VUNG TAU CARGO CHINESE CELADON VASES

Circa 1690

Circa 1690
Of high shouldered circular form,
Each approximately 15cm diameter, 19.5cm high (10).

In 1989 a Vietnamese fisherman made the chance discovery of the 'Vung Tau Cargo' by trawling the sea-bed on the Southern Coast of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. The cargo was salvaged by the state owned Vietnam Salvage Corporation in a joint-venture operation with the Singapore based Swedish diving expert, Sverker Hallstrom. The salvaged contents was subsequently sold at Christie's Amsterdam in a two-day sale of 1011 lots on 7th and 8th April 1992. The ship was an Asian trading vessel that had been burnt to the waterline as it was almost certainly bound for Indonesia from China. Batavia (now Jakarta) was the centre of the enormous Dutch East India Company (VOC) where a mixed consignment would have been prepared for the homeward run to Amsterdam or elsewhere along the Nederlandish seaboard. There was little to date the wreck except a few coins of the reign of the emperor Kangxi (1662-1722) and an inkstick bearing the cyclical date corresponding to AD 1690.