Mieulx est de ris que de larmes escripre, pour ce que rire est le propre de l’homme
“It’s better to write about laughter than tears, because laughter is what humans do”
Rabelais, Gargantua
(Well there might be a few serious bits)
This drawing of a fish is based on the decoration of a 9th century CE Chinese bowl. One of the places I enjoyed visiting most on my holiday in Singapore in 2017 was the Asian Civilisations Museum, and the exhibit I enjoyed most was the Tang shipwreck, also known as the Belitung shipwreck.
The stoneware bowl with the fish decoration was found on the wreck of an Arab dhow, discovered by fishermen in 1998 off the shores of Sumatra at Belitung Island. It was dated to the 9th century CE by radiocarbon dating of star anise preserved on the wreck, and by a bowl inscribed with a date which is equivalent to 826CE. The dhow was on the return journey from Canton in China to the Middle East, carrying luxury goods which included over 60,000 ceramic objects. The majority of the cargo was hand-painted stoneware bowls, made at Changsha in Hunan Province, packed for the journey inside large jars or straw bundles.
China’s Tang Dynasty is dated between 618-907 CE. It is regarded as having been a golden age, when China was well-governed, prosperous and cosmopolitan, and poetry and art flourished. Foreign trade expanded, with merchants from all over the Near and Far East coming to China, overland by the Silk Road, but also by sea, including the long-distance export of mass-produced ceramics.
The Chinese character for “fish” is a homophone for prosperity or abundance, so fish are considered to be lucky. The arowana or dragon fish is considered to be particularly auspicious. I have been unable to access any detailed information or images on the subject, but perhaps this fish, which has a dragon-like appearance, was painted onto the bowl as a good-luck symbol. I shall continue my researches!
I particularly loved this perky little fish as an attractive piece of art. But I was also stunned to think that at the time when the 9th century Saxons were making handmade, low-fired, grass-tempered pottery in Southern England, and the 9th century Viking occupants of Orkney were mostly not making pottery at all, on the other side of the world people were making wheel-thrown, high-fired stonewares with coloured decoration!