A cargo of 18th-century Chinese porcelain recovered by the Vietnamese Government after 280 years lost on the sea bed of the South China Seas finally will finish its three-century journey in an three-day auction starting from Saturday.

The ship-load of ancient Chinese ceramics, mostly blue and white dishes and cups, are believed to be European market-oriented tea wares from Jingdezhen, the famous porcelain capital in China.

It is estimated that a sum in excess of two million euros (about US$2.6 million) will be realized from the sale of the Chinese ceramics dating from about 1725-all of which have for centuries lain lost and forgotten in the waters of the South China Sea.

Among the tens of thousands of pieces to be offered are vast quantities of all manner of wares - everything from fine blue and white tea services, to porcelain boxes and beer mugs, to delightful polychrome figures.

Like every shipwreck, with 130,000 pieces of China's Qing Dynasty junk retrieved form the site, should be regarded as time capsule full of information for maritime archaeologists and historians to reconstruct its historical context, according to Diana Ridderikihoff, director of Public Relation and Marketing with Sotheby's.

The transport of Chinese porcelain in the Yongzheng period was undertaken almost exclusively by Chinese merchants when their junks plied the Philippine and Indonesian archipelagoes and the coasts of Vietnam, Thailand and Malaysia.

Huge and greatly varied quantities of undergalze-blue and polychrome porcelain flooded Netherlands and then western Europe. And many of the ships, including the one retrieved in the Vietnamese waters in 1998 and 1999, ended in disasters.

One surprising find from the shipwreck, a series of dishes of different sizes with apparent European landscape, reveals that the ship was oriented to Europe, and most likely to Amsterdam, a major trade harbor in those days.

The hilly foreground-fence-posts, a tree, two walking men wearing hats and another man with a cow on a leash, the church tower, ship sails in the background, and especially the flat rim of monochrome blue pattern of waves bear the typical "Scheveningen design" of the coastal village in Netherlands.

This extensive hoard will be offered in some 1,500 lots, with estimates ranging from 100 to 10,000 euros.

Proceeds from the sale is said to be used by the Vietnamese government to fund further salvage operations, and to provide necessary research and display facilities for the items it has retained.

(Source: Xinhua News Agency January 28, 2007)