Ocean of Objects: Goods

The container ships and car transporters arriving in Fremantle, bulk carriers leaving Port Hedland and oil tankers sailing past Singapore are part of a long history of maritime trade. Objects and raw materials of all kinds have been traded around and across the Indian Ocean for thousands of years.

In the past important cargoes included spices, cloth, gems and fine pottery; and slaves. Many becoming rare and expensive luxuries when they reached their final destinations after months at sea.

Spicing Up a Roman Feast

Pepper Pot
Hoxne, England, 400 CE
The British Museum, 1994,0408.34

A tiny ‘superhero’ fights a villain while waiting for a wealthy Roman to pick them up, open a small hatch underneath and sprinkle pepper on to their food. This is a small silver pepper pot, gilt with gold. Pepper or other spices were kept inside the hollow base. Pepper from India was traded across the ocean to the Roman Empire two thousand years ago. There, pepper and other spices like Indonesian cloves and Sri Lankan cinnamon were in great demand.

The clue as to who these two people on this pepper pot are is on the back. A wooden club is leaning against the leg of one figure. This is the hero Hercules. His opponent is a giant called Antaeus, who could never be defeated so long as his feet were touching the ground. Hercules is here winning by lifting the giant in the air.

This pepper pot was found in Britain, with three others buried in a chest of other treasures by a local farmer in 1992.

A Potted History

Saucer
c.1635 - 1645
Rijksmuseum, Netherlands, AK-RBK-15794

The pots in this case have all crossed the Indian Ocean, some more than once. They span 700 years of ceramic production in the Indian Ocean region.

Blue and white decorated porcelain was first made in China in the 1300s initially for the Persian market and was already being exported around the Indian Ocean, before Europeans first sailed around Africa to reach India and China. So popular was blue and white pottery, that it was copied and made in Vietnam and Thailand. When Portuguese traders reached China by sea in the 1520s, Chinese potters started to make blue and white porcelain for the European market. This kraak porcelain, named after the Portuguese ships or carracks that carried it, became very popular in Europe, including the Netherlands. Dutch potters started to copy the blue and white designs on Delftware using underglaze cobalt blue imported from Saxony in the 1700s. Blue and white patterns inspired by China became so popular with Europeans that local factories made their own and began to embellish and modify designs. This is the origin of the ‘Willow Pattern’ dinner services still made today.