Griffin: On the Route of an Indiaman

Franck Goddio and Evelyne Jay Guyot de Saint Michel

In this publication Franck Goddio presents the final results and conclusions of fifteen years of patient efforts of research, restoration and preservation of the thousands of items found on the wreck of the honourable East India Company ship Griffin, which sank with a cargo of porcelain, silks and tea in the Sulu Sea in 1761. The Griffin was part of a convoy sailing along a so far little known and inventive alternative sea route, and accompanied a secret mission of the up most importance for the policy of expansion which the East India Company aggressively, if discreetly, pursued at the time. The minute restoration, documentation and comparison of the vestiges of this shipwreck cast new light on European trading patterns, but above all on our knowledge of the great Chinese art of porcelain manufacture and decoration and its master artists.

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