Ceramics in the Bakau Shipwrecks donated to the Hunan Museum

On May 16th, the donation ceremony of ceramics from the Bakau shipwreck by a German explorer Tilman Walterfang was held in the Hunan Museum. It marks the first overseas donation since the opening of the new museum as well as the one of unrivaled scale since the establishment  of Hunan Museum, bringing in 38 high-quality ceramics for permanent collection. 

The ceremony were presentd by several officials such as Chen Yuanping, director of Hunan Provincial Bureau of Cultural Heritage, Liu Ze, deputy director of museum section of the Bureau, Tilman Walterfang  as well as lin Yiqiu and his wife. During the ceremony, Li Jianmao, on behalf of the museum, took over from Tilman Walterfang a tripodia incense burner made in Jingdezhen (a city in China well known for fine porcelain products), and presented him in return a collection certificate of Hunan Museum. 

Born in Hamburg in 1956, Tilman Walterfang has been devoted to charity for nearly 20 years. In 1996, he founded a salvage company in Germany, which successively salvaged the Yingtan sunken ship,  Bakau Ship (1403AD--1424AD, Yongle period of Ming Dynasty) and Batu Hitam ship loaden with treasures of Tang Dynasty. Through long-term coopetations with coastal countries,  he played an important role in the discovery and  protection of underwater cultural heritages, promoting cultural communications  among countries along the Maritime Silk Road. 

Of the total 38 pottery and porcelain items donated by Tilman Walterfang, 23 were from Southeast Asia while the rest were from China. Among them are some exquisite works including Longquan celadon bowl with bright glaze and clear lines, Jingdezhen censer with reddish brown glaze, Jingdezhen blue-white glazed and finely textured bowl, Thailand red pottery water bottle(for Buddhist monks) as well as all kinds of Southeast Asian blue porcelain jars which combine local skills with Chinese designs. Bakau shipwrecks were found in waters around Bakau Island, west of Karimata Strait in Indonesia. It presumably was a smuggler from south coast of China, via Thailand and probably to harbors of Java (an island of Indonesia). It was eventually decided, from the plentiful copper coins imprinted with “Yong Le Tong Bao” (coins used during Yongle period) found there and the timber of the body, that this ship was used during early 15th century, the very time when Zheng He launched his famous expedition.  The fact that this period of time witnessed the most stringent ban of Ming Dynasty on maritime trade further justified the value of the discovery. Featuring great ingenuity and delicacy, those cultural relics unveiled the trades and cultural exchanges between China and other Southeast Asian countries in the past, thus assuming great academic significance in studies of “The Belt and Road” project.