Tek Sing Cargo Shipwreck 1822 Block Print Porcelain Bowl

~ Tek Sing Cargo Shipwreck 1822 Block Print Porcelain Bowl ~

The bowl is in the blue on white block print pattern.

~ Tek Sing ~

The Tek Sing (Chinese, “True Star”) was a large three-masted Chinese ocean-going junk which sank on February 6, 1822 in an area of the South China Sea known as the Belvidere Shoals. The vessel was 50 meters in length, 10 meters wide and had a burthen of about a thousand tons. Its tallest mast was estimated to be 90 feet in height. The ship was manned by a crew of 200 and had approx. 1600 passengers. The great loss of life associated with the sinking has led to the Tek Sing being referred to in modern times as the “Titanic of the East”.

On May 12, 1999, British marine salvor Michael Hatcher discovered the wreck of the Tek Sing in an area of the South China Sea north of Java, east of Sumatra and south of Singapore. His crew raised about 350,000 pieces of the ship’s cargo in what is described as the largest sunken cache of Chinese porcelain ever recovered. Human remains were also found, but they were not disturbed as most of Hatcher’s crew, being Indonesian and Chinese, believed that bad luck would befall any who disturbed the dead.

The Tek Sing’s recovered cargo was auctioned at Nagel Auctions in Stuttgart, Germany in November 2000.

~ Condition ~

There is a small chip to the rim. It still bears the original Nagel auction label. The glaze is crazed. There is minor sea encrustation to the interior.

~ Dimensions ~

The bowl is 6 cm (2.25 inches) tall and 14 cm (5.5 inches) in diameter.