Chapter 16 Porcelain Harvest
The feeling of being exhausted but very good at being exhausted is that Xia Yu is that he doesn’t have to worry about insomnia at all, even if he only drank some tea from more than two hundred years ago before going to bed.
Breakfast is still the norm. Xia Xue usually doesn’t make breakfast, but she can’t get up so early. She didn’t have time to edit, dub and post-production she filmed in the past two days, so she didn’t have time to upload the food productions, dubbing and post-production.
After breakfast, Xia Xue continued to follow her mother to go to the sea. She worked as a photographer and commentator. Xia's mother, Chen Fuqiong, was the one who drove the sea. She knew the most about the situation of the nearby beaches. She harvested a lot of harvests from the sea, but most of them were crabs, shellfish, conchs.
Xia Yu estimated that the effect of the sea-driving videos made by the Xia Yu would be very average. They would definitely not carry a water pump to bet on whether there are any big goods in the pit, nor would they spend hours manually scoop the pit dry. Naturally, there would be no "blood loss" scene that netizens like to watch.
Xia Yu and Xia Mingguang still go fishing in the sea, and their destination is still near Shigui Island today.
Chen Fuqiong still didn't forget to tell them to come back early for lunch, and Xia Xue also said that she would call them to remind them.
The father and son have to hurry up today. Xia Mingguang drove the boat at full speed and didn't care about fuel consumption. Xia Yu had already done warm-up exercises while on the road.
After yesterday's shipwreck salvage, his salvage experience has also increased a lot. I believe that today's speed will be faster than yesterday.
After arriving at the waters of Shigui Island, Xia Yu put on his equipment and went into the water. However, he was not fully armed, and the communicator of diving suits and shoes was still necessary, mainly to relieve Xia Mingguang. He also made an appointment. At most, he would take the boat to rest for a while and drink some water and eat something.
Fortunately, Xia Yu's superpowers have been upgraded, otherwise it would be very cold to go into the sea before seven o'clock. When people dive, the heat loss will be much faster than on the shore, and it will be even colder when they go down to a depth of 40 meters under the water.
Xia Yu dived to the wreckage. In the cabin excavated yesterday, due to the sea water and tidal flow, there was already a lot of mud and sand backfilling. He continued to excavate at the bow and found many tea boxes and tea pots. He thought that the Portuguese should have transported so many goods such as tea and silk based on maximization of interests.
Even though he did not have much economic value, Xia Yu was meticulous and kept them in space as cultural relics. He did not intend to do more post-processing for the time being.
An hour later, he also surfaced on time, returned to the boat to drink some water and eat something to replenish energy consumption, and also talked to his father about their own gains.
After resting for about a quarter of an hour, Xia Yu continued to dive.
He would first put the mud and sand on the surface into the space and pile it up separately so as not to be washed back by sea water. In another cabin near the bow, when he cleared out more than half a meter of mud and sand, he was extremely surprised to find Xin Niannian's porcelain, which was not like the previous ones and two pieces, but were natively stacked, neatly placed, and the same size, stacked densely.
There is no doubt that this cabin is specially used to store porcelain.
Originally, according to the underwater archaeology process, we had to record videos, take photos, and draw records before the porcelain extraction process could be performed.
Xia Yu simplified the process here. This is a Portuguese ship. Like Xia Mingguang, he felt less guilty. As he said, even if it was smuggled, it was the goods bought by the Portuguese. There were countless shipwrecks around the waters of China, but underwater archaeological salvage, Western countries, Annan and other Southeast Asian countries salvaged too much treasures than China, and it was not easy to recover them.
Of course, Xia Yu’s first priority now is to properly preserve the porcelain in this cabin. Continue to clean up the mud and sand on the surface, and present the treasure to him more clearly.
This is a cabin that has not been disturbed at all. It is full of blue and white porcelain bowls. The sizes of the bowls are exactly the same, one is covered with one, one is stacked with one row, one is pressed with one row, up and down, close to the front and back. Due to the protection of mud and sand, these porcelains are basically not damaged.
This great discovery made Xia Yu ecstatic, but he still suppressed his agitation and carefully carried out the porcelain collection work.
If there is no space for the treasure tripod, even if he finds such a big treasure, he will probably have to worry. In general, the extraction of shipwreck cultural relics, without damaging the cultural relics, several groups of divers will take a long time to operate underwater, and will be affected by various factors such as weather, ocean currents and tides.
Xia Yu is now more and more adept at using space. Starting from the edge of the cabin, he first cleared out the mud and sand between the blue and white porcelain, and then manually salvage it as an auxiliary, putting the pieces of porcelain into the space and temporarily placed it in the sea water.
The subsequent cleaning, desalination and reinforcement treatment will be done after the original deity comes out of water.
If Xia Mingguang hadn't reminded him that it was time to get on the boat to rest, Xia Yu would probably have been working on it.
There was really no way to hurry up. Xia Yu estimated that the number of porcelain in this cabin alone was more than 2,000 pieces.
He was not sure how many cabins were loaded with porcelain in this way. As for his expectations, of course, the more, the better.
According to the detailed records of other shipwreck salvages he checked, it is most common for an ordinary merchant ship to carry tens of thousands of pieces of porcelain. However, even a few larger ships, tens of thousands of pieces of porcelain are not a problem. Some people from the Eagle even salvaged millions of pieces of porcelain from a ship in the South China Sea. In order to maximize their interests, he was so crazy that he smashed more than 650,000 pieces of porcelain of ordinary quality and threw them back into the sea.
"Ten tombs per ship" is really not just a saying. Of course, the premise is that you can discover a truly treasured shipwreck. Such a shipwreck only accounts for 10% of all shipwrecks in the ocean, and the most valuable shipwrecks are.
Near Shigui Island alone, Xia Yu dived to the bottom of the sea before and found several ships, but only this ship had porcelain on it, and the other ships were all fishing boats that had no economic value, and almost no one would do the loss of money.
This morning, he was racing against time and would put all the porcelain in the cabin into the space.
When he returned, Xia Mingguang drove the boat. Xia Yu took a rest while dealing with the batch of blue and white porcelain.
He was so busy that he didn't have much time to catch seafood today, so he just dived and floated up and saw the artificial ocean in the right space.
There are 2,135 blue and white porcelains in this cabin, all of which are "made in the Kangxi period of the Qing Dynasty", which is as expected. It was previously concluded that it was a shipwreck in the early years of Yongzheng because he salvaged the corresponding porcelain, but the quantity was very small. Time will only depend on the last era.
As for why there are so many porcelains in the late Kangxi period, further exploration and verification are needed and practical evidence is used to speak.
When cleaning and removing the scale of this batch of blue and white porcelain in Baoding Space, he also discovered an important situation. This batch of blue and white porcelain is all traditional Chinese instrument shapes, patterns, and themes.
He is quite sure that the ship's cargo is ready to be exported, because it appears in the South China Sea in Guangdong Province, and he will not take this route when he goes to RB!
During the Ming and Qing Dynasties, traditional porcelain still accounted for the majority of exported porcelain. Then, it is necessary to look at the actual trading target of each ship owner. Not all exported porcelains are specially tailored for the bad guys.
This is undoubtedly good news for Xia Yu.
Because in the current domestic market, traditional Chinese porcelain is more popular. The export "trade porcelain" tailor-made for foreign customers is more popular in foreign markets, but the domestic market is basically not cold and the aesthetics are different, so there is no good price.
Xia Yu is quite familiar with these market conditions and has taken action before and is always paying attention to this situation.
What he is dealing with is a typical traditional porcelain, with a very complete quality and looks like a brand new one, a gourd bottle with blue and white branches and flower patterns in the Kangxi Qing Dynasty.
The gourd bottle is a traditional shape of ancient Chinese porcelain. Because its name is homophonic to Fulu, it is widely loved by the people.
During the reign of Emperor Kangxi and Yongzheng in the Qing Dynasty, gourd bottles were common among exported porcelain varieties.
This gourd bottle is about 18 cm high, with a diameter of 1.5 cm and a base of about 4 cm. The shape is regular, the blue and white hair color is tight, the blue and white hair color is bright, bright, green, and the color level changes clearly. The painting brushwork is simple and flexible, with a luxurious atmosphere, a typical late Kangxi style.
There is no need to worry about whether the blue and white porcelain salvaged in this way is fake. However, these porcelains are all from folk kilns, with a large quantity and a small price. Official kiln porcelains are not cost-effective, and are only available in the imperial palace. They are far from comparing to folk kiln porcelains with low cost, fast selling prices and large sales.
In Xia Yu's opinion, this gourd bottle is definitely a fine product among folk kiln porcelain, and is especially well preserved.
Of course, he cannot be in a hurry, he must do a good job in cleaning and desalination.
After he cleaned the surface of the gourd bottle and the mud inside it, he rinsed it with clean water and put it in a pool specially prepared for desalting, so that the salt in the porcelain can slowly precipitate out to avoid damaging the body and glaze.
This kind of underglaze colored blue and white porcelain is the best to handle, and Xia Yu is familiar with it.
As for how to take advantage of such fine folk kiln blue and white porcelain later, he still has to make a long-term plan.
When they returned to the dock, they still saw fishing management boats patrolling at sea, and they basically would not drive to sea areas like Shigui Island.
At this moment, the village fishmonger Huang Laoer was near the dock. Seeing their boat back, he came up to buy their fishing catch this morning. But the father and son did not intend to sell it to him. Xia Mingguang said that fishing was just a hobby, and Shi Jiugong just kept it himself to make soup.
Chapter completed!