Lacquer Ware
by Mildred Boyd

     In his book, 1421, The Year China Discovered America, Gavin Menzies proposes the intriguing idea that Chinese had not only landed on the Pacific coast ofMéxico some 71 years before Columbus set forth and nearly one hundred years before the first Spaniard set foot in mainland México, but had planted colonies in Jalisco and Michoacan. An original and fascinating idea and well argued except for one major flaw.

     Unless other Chinese ships had made the voyage several centuries earlier, however, one of his main arguments will not really hold water. The assumption that the similarities of the lacquered works produced in the Orient and the New World indicated a common origin is not valid. Despite the fact that many materials and processes were to be seen in workshops on both sides of the Pacific, it would seem that such similarities are purely coincidental.

     The lacquering technique was developed much earlier than 1421 in pre-Hispanic México in direct response to the needs of the people of that time. Lacquered gourds and vessels carved from wood were originally used to store, serve and transport liquids, foods, seeds, and other necessities of pre-Hispanic life.

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