15th Century Porcelain Box

When China’s Ming dynasty ceased trade with the outside world in the mid 15th Century, Vietnamese porcelain filled the china void, monopolizing the global market for 150 years; artifacts from this period have been found from Japan, to the Middle East, to Africa, and even Europe. Sometime in the mid-to-late 15th Century, a china trading ship sank during a typhoon in the South China Sea. The “Hội An Wreck” was discovered by fishermen in the early 1990s, 230 feet beneath the waves. The Vietnamese government (in partnership with Oxford University) salvaged thousands of artifacts from the wreck, most of it china from Chu Đậu (and other kilns) in the Red River Delta. This type of small, lidded box is thought to have been used as a cosmetics dish, but you can put in it anything you like!

3.5” x 2”