Pair of Chinese export porcelain plates from "The Nanking Cargo", each painted in underglaze blue with a flowering branch and a peony, the border with three flower bouquets. Each bears a Christie's "Nanking Cargo" auction label, lot 3659.

China c. 1751
9" diameter

PRICE: $650 pr. 

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Condition: Large flake to one, circled in yellow, not visible from the front. Rim frits to the other

On December 18, 1751, the Dutch East India Company ship, The Geldermalsen, set sail from Canton to Amsterdam, where her cargo of over 5,000 rolls of silk, 340 tons of tea and 200 chests of porcelain was to be sold. Tragically, sixteen days later, on January 3, 1752, she hit a reef and sank in 150 feet of water. Thirty-two crew members survived, but 80 men and all of her cargo was lost.

In 1985, undersea treasure hunter Michael Hatcher and his crew discovered the Geldermalsen, definitively identified by her bell. The tea and silk had long disintegrated, but the porcelain, packed in tea and straw, lay beautifully preserved on the ocean floor for 233 years. They salvaged over 150,000 pieces which were sold in 1986 at Christies in Amsterdam in a sensational sale dubbed "The Nanking Cargo" that garnered international headlines.

Scholar Christiaan J. A. Jorg details the story in his 1986 book, "The Geldermalsen- History and Porcelain". There were over 14,000 9" plates on board the ill-fated ship and Hatcher salvaged over 10,000 of them, in five different patterns.