A real treasure, truly, this beautifully intact pair of Chinese export porcelain tea bowls and saucers are part of the famous Ca Mau shipwreck cargo that was discovered in 1998 off the coast of south Vietnam. It was  the remains of an early 18th century Chinese junk carrying approximately 130,000 pieces of porcelain on it’s way from Canton to the Dutch port of Batavia (now Jakarta) when it sunk in about 1725. After the cargo was retrieved and catalogued, three Vietnamese museums chose what they wanted for their collections, the remaining 76,000 pieces were sold in a spectacular sale at Sotheby’s in Amsterdam in 2007 that garnered worldwide attention.  Pieces from this shipwreck, needless to say, are sometimes damaged or somewhat degraded having been under salt water for nearly three centuries, but these two examples remain in extraordinarily good condition, finely potted, charmingly hand-painted in underglaze blue, and with much of their original glaze more intact than what one usually sees on these shipwreck pieces. The saucers 4 1/2″ in diameter, the tea bowls 2 3/4″ in diameter. All pieces bearing the Sotheby’s sale stickers; an opportunity to own a piece of a time capsule of the China Trade.  Circa 1725.