VERY SPECIAL PRICE/MARK DOWN-Outstanding Porcelain from the TEK SING Shipwreck in 1822

Forgive any redundancies but not knowing if someone might only look at one or two TEK SING items I want to ensure the story is listed with each.

The ship was a large Chinese junk cargo/passenger ship. It sunk in 1822 while en route from China to what was then known as the Dutch East Indies, now Indonesia. Some accounts list it as 50 meters long while others cite 60 meters. The beam has been noted at 10 meters. The was quite large for the period and had a crew estimated at 200!

This style of porcelain, each hand painted, was for the Asian market, with the thinking 200 years ago that this style and patterns would not be well received in Europe. The ship was carrying a huge cargo--of both people and porcelain.

The ship was estimated to have some 1,600 Chinese immigrants onboard when it sunk. Only about 200 survived. Because of this it has been called the "Asian Titanic." The ship was discovered in 1999 and the team doing the salvage estimated that the ship carried 350,000 porcelain items.

Many shipwrecks have been discovered in Chinese and other Asian waters but most are nameless. Tek Sing happened to be one of the few about which facts are known.

I was extremely fortunate to be able to purchase these. While there may have been 350,000 pieces on board, the first thing the salvage divers found was an enormous strewn field of mostly shards or broken pieces. One can't just walk into a shipwreck store and order a place setting for eight! The team that discovered the ship has offered hundreds of pieces for sale that are chipped or broken, some repaired, most not. There are no cracks, chips or crazing on the glaze. Some have light blue, some a bit darker, and if you look closely you will also see subtle design difference since the were hand-painted.

This lot is for ONE TEA CUP AND ONE SAUCER. The saucer does not have a circular indentation for the cup as do most modern cups and saucers; the "saucer" was also intended to be used as a small plate, such as we might today for a roll or appetizer..

If you have interest in only a single tea cup or a single saucer/small plate, please let me know. I will reserve four of the six pairs to sell together, but will split up the others if someone wishes to purchase only one pce.