“A China Boxe”: Ming Porcelain, Indigenous Diplomacy, and Global Exchange in Early Virginia
Merry Abbitt Outlaw, Senior Curator, Jamestown Rediscovery
Bly Straube, Senior Curator, Jamestown-Yorktown Foundation
Porcelain Box sherd from Jamestown, Dehua, China, ca. 1600-1620. H: 1 ½”.
The box is embossed with vertical reeding on the exterior, and a V-shaped indentation in the corner
Ming Chinese porcelain sherds representing over 135 discrete vessels have been recovered at James Fort (1607-1624) by Jamestown Rediscovery archaeologists. Most are blue and white kraak porcelain made in Jingdezhen, Jiangxi province, China, during the reign of the Wanli Emperor. Also represented are many bowls made in Zhangzhou, Fujian province on China’s southeast coast. Unique within this assemblage, however, is a corner sherd from a small press-molded box, made in Dehua, also Fujian province—a center famous for producing Blanc de Chine, a fine, white porcelain manufactured during the Yuan and Ming dynasties.
These small Dehua boxes are often identified as cosmetic containers, but their form and finish also make them well-suited for holding incense, medicines, or other precious substances. The sides of the box are embossed with parallel vertical reeding that deliberately imitates woven bamboo strips, a visual reference to lacquered wares produced in southern China since at least the fourth century BCE. Far from being merely decorative, this motif situates the object within a long-standing tradition of elite material culture: Chinese lacquer boxes of this type were highly prestigious luxury goods, potent markers of wealth and status, and objects commonly mobilized within diplomatic exchange networks.
Box with cover, Dehua, China. Ca. 1600-1620.
3 3/4” x 3 3/4” x 2 1/2”.
The Jamestown box sherd is identical to this intact square box, suggesting they may have been made in the same mold.
Documentary evidence suggests that such an object played a role in diplomatic relationships among North American Indigenous nations before 1621. That year, English colonists traveling up the Potomac River reported seeing a “China Boxe at one of the Kings Houses.” When they asked the werowance how he obtained it, he replied that it had been sent by “a King that dwelt in the West, over the great Hills, some tenne dayes journey, whose Country is near a great Sea.” The gift-giver had said that it came from people “that came thither in ships, that weare cloths, crooked swords . . .dwelt in houses and were called Acanack-China.”
Carved red lacquer Chinese box with gilded basketry panels, early 17th century. H: 3-5/8” x W: 5 ¾” x D 5 ¾” (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gift of Florence and Herbert Irving, 2015). Accession 2015.500.1.60a,b. The box lid is carved with plum blossoms and magpies, which is an auspicious bird in Chinese culture because its name is a homophone for “happiness.” Note the woven bamboo and the deeply cut corners, and the pedestal base.
The Englishmen describe the box they had seen as “made of braided Palmito, painted without, and lined in the inside with blue Taffata after the China or East India fashion,” a description that strongly suggests a lacquered bamboo container. Although this description does not match the porcelain box found at James Fort, the Virginia werowance’s “China Boxe” is nonetheless highly significant as it underscores the reach and vitality of Indigenous trade and diplomatic networks. These networks extended far beyond English colonial influence, connecting Native leaders to global goods, distant cultures and long-standing systems of exchange.
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Following the Dragon: Ming Chinese Porcelain from Jamestown at Jamestown Settlement is a special cooperative exhibition by the Jamestown Rediscovery
Foundation (Preservation Virginia) and the Jamestown-Yorktown Foundation. The exhibition, which runs through July 12, 2026, reunites thirty-one fragmentary Ming porcelain vessels recovered from James Fort with intact parallel examples from British, Dutch, and U.S. museums and private collections. Highlights include extraordinarily rare wares such as a bottle depicting the Chinese fenghuang, known today only from James Fort and a single matching pair in the collection of King Charles III.
References
Susan Myra Kingsbury (1906-1935) The Records of the Virginia Company of London III (Washington: Government Printing Office), 547.
Merry Abbitt Outlaw (2025) Following the Dragon: Late Ming Porcelain from James Fort, Jamestown, Virginia (Hollis, NH: Jamestown Rediscovery Foundation).
Samuel Purchas (1625) Hakluytus Posthumus or Purchas His Pilgrimes XIX (Glasgow: James MacLehose & Sons, 1907), 151-152.