This is a blue-and-white porcelain bowl adorned with a floral design against a hexagonal tortoiseshell diaper ground.
In terms of morphology, the bowl features an everted rim, slanting walls, and is supported by a ring foot. The transparent glaze exhibits a subtle greenish-yellow tint with a fine network of crackles across the surface, characteristic of the typical body and glaze aesthetics found in fifteenth-to-sixteenth-century Annamese blue-and-white ceramics. This visual quality stems from the traditional practice of Vietnamese kilns incorporating wood ash into the glaze formulation as a flux. The exterior wall is decorated with a continuous, repetitive diaper pattern consisting of hexagons, alternatively referred to as a cash-motif due to its resemblance to overlapping circular coins with central perforations. Each hexagonal cell is punctuated by a small fleuret, while the zone adjacent to the foot is painted with conventionalised lotus panels or lingzhi cloud scrolls. The interior wall is embellished with scrolled floral and foliate bands executed in dots and lines, while the center of the well contains a circular floral medallion comprising a small central blossom encircled by interlocking leafy scrolls. Both the hexagonal tortoiseshell motif and the floral scrolls represent decorative designs frequently encountered during the Ming Dynasty.
The ornamentation of this vessel inherits the diaper grounds, classic scrolls, cruciform motifs, and lotus petals characteristic of Chinese blue-and-white porcelain, yet it is rendered with looser, more cursive brushwork. The edges of the underglaze blue designs exhibit a slight bleeding effect, which occurs when the cobalt pigment is partially absorbed into the clay body, causing the outlines to appear subtly diffused. Within the context of Japanese tea-utensil aesthetics, this specific bleeding effect is termed shibori-te (絞手). The coloration is somewhat pale, with some brushstrokes verging on a grayish-blue hue, suggesting the possible employment of cobalt ore sourced from Yunnan, China. Vietnamese blue-and-white wares display a variety of treatments on their bases, including a ferruginous wash (chocolate bottom), an unglazed surface, or a transparent glaze; the base of the ring foot on this specific specimen is left unglazed where it meets the kiln floor, showing a faint iron-red scorching, whilst the central area within the foot remains unglazed.
Numerous pinholes resulting from crawling glaze are visible on the exterior of the body, potentially induced by an uneven distribution of internal stress within the glaze layer. The interior exhibits several instances of smoke staining, manifest as dark blemishes caused by defective thermal convection inside the kiln chamber.
During the mid-fourteenth to early fifteenth centuries, kilns located in northern Vietnam, particularly those surrounding Thăng Long and the early Bat Trang region, manifested a distinctive vitality within the burgeoning waves of maritime export trade, extending the reach of their glazed ceramics to the western gateways of Japan. The Vietnamese ceramic industry of this era was undergoing a transitional phase from traditional methods to a mature stage of blue-and-white production, with its output predominantly comprising large-scale plates and bowls manufactured to fulfill overseas demands for utilitarian tableware. Regarding technological execution, Vietnamese potters extensively utilized local iron-rich pigments to delineate sprigs of chrysanthemums with spontaneous, succinct lines in the center of the interior wells, while the interior and exterior rims were bordered by scrolling foliage. Concurrently, a select portion of high-end products began to assimilate the decorative compositions of late Yuan Dynasty Chinese blue-and-white porcelain, experimenting with the introduction of cobalt blue for painted designs, whilst maintaining iron-brown lines to demarcate the decorative registers. Constrained by contemporary levigation techniques for raw body clays and the firing limits of local kilns, and to prevent the stoneware bodies from collapsing or warping under intense kiln temperatures, Vietnamese potters devised a unique micro-morphological feature: fashioning the ring feet to be conspicuously wide and low. This structural element became the most recognizable localized hallmark of Vietnamese export ceramics from this period.
Following the successful expulsion of Ming forces and the restoration of national independence in AD 1427, the Vietnamese ceramic industry entered a century-long golden age under the patronage of the Lê Dynasty. During this epoch, the industry thrived profoundly, centered around the Chu Dau and Bat Trang kilns in the Red River Delta. This boom culminated not only in masterpieces such as the monumental blue-and-white vase currently housed in Turkey, which bears a definitive cyclical inscription corresponding to the eighth year of the Zhengho era (AD 1450), but also in the large-scale distribution of goods across island Southeast Asia, successfully capturing the market vacuum left by shifts in Chinese maritime policies. Conversely, direct exports from Vietnamese kilns to the main islands of Japan practically ground to a halt during this phase; instead, these wares entered the castles of the Ryukyu Kingdom as highly prized rarities, funneled through the kingdom’s international entrepôt trade networks. Throughout this production phase, Vietnamese potters demonstrated superlative command over complex decorative techniques, including mold-impressing, underglaze blue painting, and overglaze enameling. Whether producing octagonal pear-shaped vessels or delicate dishes with double-line lotus panels, they manifested a technical confidence that rivaled that of Jingdezhen in China. Meanwhile, a uniquely indigenous Vietnamese innovation—the application of a chocolate bottom, achieved by coating the interior base within the ring foot with a layer of ferruginous wash to prevent adhesion during firing—became a standardized convention for export merchandise.
By the mid-sixteenth century, the strict enforcement of maritime prohibitions by the Ming Dynasty generated an urgent demand in international markets for Southeast Asian commodities and raw silk. Leveraging its bountiful raw silk yields and advanced kiln industry, northern Vietnam emerged once more as a focal point of international trade. To cater directly to Japanese merchants arriving in Cochinchina aboard Shuinsen (Red Seal ships) from the 1590s onwards, the kilns of northern Vietnam embarked on large-scale, customized production tailored to foreign tastes. The most celebrated vessels from this period, dubbed tombo-wan (dragonfly bowls) or shibori-te by Japanese tea masters, were cylindrical tea bowls specifically adapted by Vietnamese potters to align with the rustic aesthetics of wabi-cha (grass-hut tea ceremony). Vietnamese workshops applied an indigenous high-calcium ash glaze over a white slip coat, leaving three spur marks on the interior base from the stack-firing process. To satisfy the Japanese tea masters’ predilection for asymmetry and the beauty of imperfection, the potters broke with conventional manufacturing standards, intentionally squeezing the walls of the bowls by hand to yield a warped, oval cross-section. Decoratively, Vietnamese painters completely departed from their standard dense, interlocking foliate scrolls, opting instead for minimalist, isolated strokes executed in domestic cobalt. This specific cobalt was dark and prone to bleeding within the soft glaze, creating images of dragonflies, prawns, birds, and bamboo grasses that evoked the natural, diffused quality of indigo-dyed textiles.
Nonetheless, this customized prosperity, heavily contingent upon a specific overseas market, encountered a catastrophic historical turning point between the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. With the total maturation of private kilns in Jingdezhen during the late Ming Dynasty—particularly the exponential surge in the production of Kraak porcelain and Ko-sometsuke (old blue-and-white), which was highly adapted to the Japanese market—Chinese porcelain, characterized by a more lustrous white body, flawlessly vitrified glaze, and highly competitive pricing, swept across global markets once more like a tidal wave. Faced with the formidable impact of Jingdezhen’s dual advantages in massive production capacity and technical supremacy, the competitive space for Vietnamese ceramics was ruthlessly restricted, both in its traditional strongholds in Southeast Asia and within the specialized tea-utensil market of Japan. This international ripple effect, triggered by the comprehensive resurgence of output and technological breakthroughs at Jingdezhen, directly precipitated an irreversible decline in Vietnamese export ceramics from the late sixteenth century onwards. By the mid-seventeenth century, the implementation of the maritime seclusion policy (sakoku) by Japan completely severed the Red Seal ship trade routes, bringing a formal end to the targeted, specialized production sustained for decades by the Red River Delta kilns. Consequently, Vietnamese ceramics gradually withdrew from the mainstream international export arena, reverting to a domestic industry dedicated to serving local populations and monastic religious institutions.
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Kikuchi, Yuriko. A History of Maritime Trade in Northern Vietnam, 12th to 18th Centuries: Archaeological Investigations in Vandon and Phohien. Singapore, Springer Nature Singapore, 2021.
