The Macau Scientific and Cultural Centre Museum (The Macau Museum) in Lisbon is Portugal's main museum of Chinese artefacts and artworks. Made to document Sino-Portuguese relations, the museum contains over 3,500 works of art including decorative artwork, costumes, a collection of opium-smoking paraphernalia and an important extensive collection of Chinese ceramics.
The museum comprises two distinct and complementary sections, a section on the Historical and Cultural Condition of Macau in the 16th and 17th Centuries on the ground floor and a section in its Chinese Art Collection on the first floor.
Rooms and layout
Ground floor
This floor depicts Ming China and to the intercultural border between Europe and China created with the port city of Macau. The exhibit details the history of Luso-Chinese relations and Macau:
Portugal and China: The Beginnings of an Encounter illustrates the unique conditions that originated the city of Macau, while accompanying the growing relationships of the Portuguese with Ming China and the circulation of interests and information from the China Sea to the Indian and the Atlantic oceans; The Port City shows how the network of interests and relations between groups of Portuguese and Chinese created the need and possibility for a city of services between Europe and Asia, between East Asia, the Indian and the Atlantic oceans; The Order of Transfers makes contact with some of the ecological and technological exchanges that make Macau a pole of dynamism in East Asia and Europe. New foods, instruments and measures enter China and Europe through Macau, which has been since its origin one of the central points in the regular openness and communication between East Asia and Europe, between both and the rest of the world; Christianity and Culture emphasises the role of Macau as a place of religious plurality with a Chinese syncretism of popular religiosity, Buddhism, Taoism and Confucianism, accompanied by Christianity, with an emphasis on the role of St. Paul's College, the first European university college in China.
First floor This floor covers a period of more than 5,000 years of Chinese history and art. The collection consists of terracottas, Chinese bronzes, stoneware, blue and white porcelain, green family porcelain, pink family porcelain, emblazoned and monogrammed porcelain, religious symbolic porcelain, Shek Wan ceramics, opium-smoking paraphernalia, china trade, lacquerware, paintings from Chinese and European schools, fans, silverware, costumes and a collection of numismatics.
Collections View part of the museum's collection, openly available to download under a CC BY-SA 4.0 licence here.
Bronzes
The manufacture of bronze began in the Xia dynasty (c.2200-1765 B.C.), reaching its zenith during the Shang dynasty (c. 1700-1050 B.C.). It was linked to sacrificial religious rituals and ancestor worship. The first bronzes copied the forms of Neolithic ceramics such as three-footed vases, pedestal plates and jugs. The main decorative motif of the ritual vases of the Shang dynasty was the Taotie – a mask of a non-specified animal with eyes, ears, mouth, horns and paws. A Taotie mask features on a Gui vessel from the Zhou period (c. 771–475 BC) in the museum's collection.
Archeological excavations of tombs of later epochs, Zhou of the East, Han and Tang, reveal the existence of various bronze objects (vases for wine and other beverages, food containers, arms and mirrors) necessary for everyday life and the afterlife.
One of the oldest objects in the museum's collection is a bronze Jue ritual vessel from the Shang dynasty (c. 1750 – 1050 BC). This vessel in which wine was served was called Jue because of its form resembling a bird with a broad beak, used to pour the liquid, and a tail. It also has two wings and three feet.
The collection also holds a bronze sculpture of a dragon dating from the Zhou dynasty (475–221 BC). The dragon is a hybrid of various animals having the head of a lion, the wings and claws of a bird and the scales of a fish. This amalgamation is a symbol for China, given that China was initially made up of several regions, each symbolised by an animal.
Chinese ceramics
The museum has the most important collection of Chinese ceramics in Portugal. With objects ranging from neolithic earthenware to 19th century export porcelain, the museum's ceramics collection covers over a period of over 5,000 years of Chinese art history.
Earthenware and early ceramIcs The history of Chinese ceramics dates back to the Neolithic period.
Since the third millennium B.C., it underwent considerable development, especially with the manufacture of kitchen utensils, food storage containers, wine goblets and ritual vases. Organic substances, such as crushed shells, herbs and seed shells were added to the raw material (clay) in order to give it a greater consistency.
The museum contains several objects of neolithic earthenware, amongst them a steam cup in fine grain black earthenware, also known as “eggshell”; the stem is decorated with vertical slits and horizontal fillets.
Terracottas
The museum holds an important collection of terracotta ceramics dating from the Han dynasty (202 BC – 220 AD) through to the Ming dynasty (1368 d.C. – 1644 .d.C.).
A highlight from the collection is a Han period sculpture of a horse's head. The sculpture reveals accurate modelling techniques and a great interest in horses. New species were introduced to the stud farms of the Han dynasty emperors, strengthening the breeding stock and increasing the number of horses in use. Horses appear to have been associated with high social status, conferring on their owners a position of privilege in society.
During Tang dynasty (618–906) ceramics attained a place of prominence in daily life, acquiring daring shapes and colours, either white, blue, yellow or brown and also in polychromic combinations of 2, 3 and 4 colour in one piece, known as “sancai”.
From this period the museum houses several funeral earthenware statuettes that accompanied elements of Chinese high society in the afterlife. Their purpose was to ward off evil spirits and represent the status of the deceased in the social hierarchy. These objects portray everyday life and the socio-cultural context of the deceased. They include servants and dignitaries, animals and domestic utensils as well as imaginary figurines whose function was to protect and render the tomb inviolable.
The camel with two-humps was introduced to China from the Xiongnu region and used as a pack animal to cross the Gobi desert and the Tarim Basin. The Uighurs, Tibetans and Turks sent camels to Chang as a tribute. Camels were the beast of burden used along the Silk Route linking Chang (capital of China under the Tang dynasty) and the west. The museum contains two detailed and well executed sculptures of two-humped camels from this period.
Stoneware
It was at the end of the Zhou dynasty (1027 B.C.-256 B.C.) that stoneware was discovered. It is a resistant, waterproof material, glazed in all its thickness and made of compact particles with shiny fracture.
During the classical period, the Song dynasty (960–1279) witnessed sudden progress in agriculture and metallurgy as well as in the manufacture of silk and ceramics.
The improvement in the standard of living and subsequently of the cultural level were reflected n the ceramic production. Stoneware objects became more refined and whiter. The glaze and colour attained a high level of quality. The Celadon green became famous for its thickness, shine, tonality, texture and craquelure.
An abundance of ceramic ware was made possible by the existence of numerous kilns. The most important were those in Dingzhou, Longquan, Jingzhou, Cizhou and Jizhou.
The museum collection contains various stoneware objects from the Jin (265–316) to the Ming (1368–1644) dynasties. Of particular note is an incense burner covered with green glaze (yue ware) created during the Six Dynasties period. This object was used in temples, included in the offerings to deities, with the aim of warding off evil spirits.
Another item of particular note in the stoneware collection is a lion-shaped vessel, the purpose of which still remains unclear. Some scholars have identified it as a candlestick holder for frightening away demons. Others have interpreted it as an inkwell for scribes.
Porcelain
Technically, porcelain is a product of an improved stoneware due to the use of a special plastic potter's earth, kaolin and high temperature firing above 1350 °C. These permit a fine, translucent, hard and colourless clay.
Duarte Barbosa's book “Livro das Cousas do Oriente” is the first know recorded description, in the West, on the production of porcelain. However, the complete description was written by another Portuguese Gaspar da Cruz in his “Tratado das Cousas da China”.
Chinese porcelain was first produced in the Tang dynasty (618–906), having as its most important centre Hebei in Xingzhou. Chinese porcelain evolved rapidly during the Ming dynasty (1368–1644), due to the discovery of Kaolin. It reached the height of perfection in the mid-fourteenth century.
The museum has a vast collection of Chinese export porcelain amongst a wider variety of styles.
Blue and white porcelain
From the fourteenth to the seventeenth century, blue and white pottery constituted the bulk of Chinese porcelain production. The golden age of blue and white pottery occurred during the reign of Xuande (1426–1435). They produced bowls, vases, dishes, pilgrim flasks, meiping, aquariums and bottles all vividly decorated with fishes, birds, trees, aquatic plants and landscapes.
Chinese porcelain was regularly exported to Europe during the reign of Jiaqing (1522–1566). The Portuguese had a monopoly on this trade until the seventeenth century, when the Dutch began to control the seas of the East. The porcelain was then exported in great quantities in carracks, making it an accessible commodity to the European middle class.
It was during the reign of Wanli (1573–1620), that the blue and white porcelain for export declined in quality, with its characteristic prominent blue being replaced by a “kraakporselein”, so-called because of the type of ships used for its transport. It was first commercialized by the Portuguese and later by the Dutch. This porcelain, used in decorative panels, was characterized by dark and shiny blues and a fine glaze. The use of moulds was popularized due to growing demand but it led to an impoverished decorative style. Macao and Shantou were the main ports of export. The carraca porcelain was imitated in faience by Portugal, Holland, England, Germany and Persia for the secret of porcelain production was still unknown to them.
Of note in the museum's collection is a plate decorated with a cobalt blue underglaze characteristic of porcelain exported from the port of Shantou in the north of the Guangdong province. The motifs painted on the bottom of the plate were probably inspired by maps: two large ships, each with two masts, sailing on a rough sea, a sea monster, similar to the whales which reproduce in the South China Seas, and a rocky landscape with architectural features. In the center of the plate a compass links up with the rest of the composition through the lines extending out from the cardinal, collateral and intermediate points.