Chinese ceramics in colonial Latin America.

Abstract

From 1573 to 1815 Manila galleons traversed the Pacific bringing the luxuries of the orient to Acapulco, Mexico. Chinese porcelain, which combines beauty with utility to an unusual degree, was a major item in this trade and the best preserved. The existing Chinese ceramics in museums and venerable private collections in Mexico and Peru testify to this exchange. In addition, systematic archaeological excavations around the zocalo area in Mexico City, in Lima, and in other sites in the Spanish New World as well as from sunken Manila galleons have produced further evidence of this trade. The influence of Chinese ceramic styles in shape, motifs and compositional arrangements on locally made ceramic wares in Latin America is apparent in varying degrees. The proposed dissertation will document this historic event in trans-Pacific commercial and cultural exchange. The principal types of Chinese ceramics from the sixteenth to the early eighteenth centuries will be selected and described from museum and private collections in Mexico and Peru. Ceramic specimens from archaeological excavations in Mexico, Peru, Santa Fe, New Mexico, Guatemala and Panama will be utilized to support their antiquity and substantiate their arrival aboard the Manila galleons. Chronologies will be based on excavated materials from dated sunken galleons, and on traditional stylistic analysis. New World maiolica emulating Chinese ceramics will be dated by stylistic comparison, and their stylistic sources traced to Chinese porcelains, to native wares especially Pueblan and Andean, and to Spanish and Italian maiolica and other European and Islamic wares. Mexican museums are notably rich in their Chinese ceramic holdings gathered from cathedrals, official possessions of the Spanish crown, and established families. In contrast Chinese ceramics in Peru are almost exclusively in private collections, many of which are held by families with long established ancestries. The material and cultural contributions of the Manila galleon trade to the civilization of colonial Latin America has been little researched. This study of Chinese ceramics in the New World is an initial attempt at bringing coherence to a vast subject.