The Treasure of an Ottoman House: A Rare Piece of Chinese Porcelain in Ottoman Hungary

Summary

This is an abstract from the session entitled "Globalisation of Sino-foreign Maritime Exchange: Ocean Cultures", at the 2023 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

The proposed presentation examines the possible ways of reconstructing maritime trading connections between China and the Ottoman Empire in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, on the basis of interpreting a unique Chinese porcelain plate unearthed in Ottoman Hungary. The blue and white plate features a qilin motif and was unearthed in Esztergom, Hungary, from the context of a seventeenth-century dwelling house connected to the Ottoman settlers. The examined plate from Esztergom is significant partly because of its decoration and production technique; and partly because it comes from a well-described archaeological context, which is rare in the case of Ottoman-period Chinese porcelain in Hungary. The decoration and production technique of the plate raises questions of provenance as most of the porcelain unearthed in Hungary was most likely produced in Jingdezhen, mostly showing similar characteristics, differing from the vessel to be presented.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Globalisation of Sino-foreign Maritime Exchange: Ocean Cultures   •
• Society for Historical Archaeology 2023

Keywords

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Nicole Haddow