This white circular box has a lid decorated with moulded floral designs and a ribbed band around the outer rim. This box could be from the Dehua kilns in Fujian province, famous in the West for producing pristine ‘blanc-de-chine’ porcelain. This box was part of a group of ceramics salvaged from the Tek Sing shipwreck that sank in 1822. A total of 350,000 pieces were retrieved from the ship, the largest haul of Chinese porcelain to date. This large haul indicates that the Southeast Asian demand for such products was high at that time. The bulk of the cargo was aimed at the wealthy Chinese community in Java and the middle and upper-class Javanese who were fond of collecting Chinese porcelain.
