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| From Notices of Chinese Seals Found in Ireland by Edmund Getty (1850) |
It is not just a single stray find as over 60 stamps inscribed with Chinese characters have been found in Ireland (between 1780 & 1868) with 3 reported to have been found in Tipperary.
For a better idea of what one of these seals look like click here. Basically they are like ink stamps about 28mm square with an animal such as a monkey or a lion carved as the handle. They are completely made from porcelain.
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| Taken from "The story of the Chinese seals found in Ireland" by Imre Galambos |
I only recently came across this historical mystery while reading skeptical blogger Jason Colavito here.
I had never heard of these artifacts before but seemingly paranormal researcher Charles Fort had discussed them in his book "The Book of the Damned" in 1919. Fort's explanation was that they had fallen from an airship!
They also appeared in a book related to Arthur C. Clarke's 1980's series Mysterious World.
The first Chinese seal is thought to have been found in Mountrath in Co. Laois in 1780. Other were found all over the country, many in what were out of the way places even in those days.
The initial theories about them were influenced by British Imperialism and that the Irish were not truly of European origin and could not have produced anything like this themselves. It was said that the Chinese characters dated from the time of Confucius (500BC) and that it could only have been the Phoenicians that brought them to Ireland. Conversely Irish nationalists used the seals to argue that the Irish were distinct from the British.
In the 1850's Edmund Getty presented a paper before the Belfast Literary Society on the seals. This presentation was later made into a book and helped popularise the mystery of the Chinese seals in Ireland. It even looked at translation of the individual seals. He had sent copies of the characters to China to be translated and had friends in Hong Kong investigate the possible origins of the seals there. Getty even wondered whether medieval Irish pilgrims to the Holy Island and Egypt might have brought them back with them.
In 1868 William Frazer presented a paper on them to the Royal Irish Society. One of Getty's translator confirmed that the characters found on the seals found in Ireland were still in use on seals in China to that day. Frazer argued they could not be as old as speculated as none of the seals had ever been found in an ancient context. He said "They have never yet, in a single instance, been discovered associated with other objects of antiquarianinterest, in burrows or mounds, with bronze or stone weapons, celtic remains, or works of art – never with Danish or Anglo-Norman coins, nor even with modern articles of manufacture." He said that similar seals could be obtained in China at that time.
In the 1870's a medical missionary stationed in China, William Lockhart, had a different explanation for the seals. He told it to Edward Chittam of the Royal Irish Society about a woman from whom Lockhard had bought some similar seals.
"Her reply was that an ancestor of hers, an Irishman, was in the China trade about a century ago, and he was in the habit of bringing home a quantity of China-ware for friends, to whom he said that the shopkeepers from whom he had made his purchases gave him many of the seals, to which he had taken a fancy, and that he used constantly to give them away to friends in Ireland, and that they were carried about in all directions, being curious and interesting little things. The woman said that what she had been paid for were the remains of the large quantities formerly brought by her ancestor. Mr. Clittarn [sic] said that this was the true account of the diffusion of the seals through many parts of Ireland. I also was told that the accounts given of the finding of the seals in many places of undisturbed sepulture of great antiquity are simply untrue, and will not bear investigation. Such I believe to be the story of the seals"
Even with this "solution" speculation continued about their origin. It had began to die away until 1919 when Charles Fort wrote about them in his book (as mentioned above) the mystery began anew.
Researcher Imre Galambos writes about the seals here in much closer detail.
He concludes
"Looking at the seals today, based on their design we can fairly accurately identify them as Dehua ware from Fujian province, also known in the West as "blanc de chine". They appear to date to the eighteenth century but definitely not earlier than the seventeenth and, as Chapman has asserted, were most likely brought to Ireland after the early eighteenth century when the Dehua kilns began exporting to Europe. The inscriptions on the seals are consistent with those on late Ming and early Qing leisure seals, in contrast with other seals from earlier times. As for the seemingly random distribution of the seals throughout Ireland and the baffling conditions under which they were found, we can observe a couple of interesting circumstances. First, all of the seals undeniably came from a single collection : this is confirmed by the nearly identical physical form ,otherwise completely unattested in Europe. No matter how scattered the finds were, all of the seals were found in Ireland, which clearly shows a common point from which the original collection was dispersed. Secondly, there is the revealing fact that the fifty odd seals were all discovered between 1780 and 1853, with virtually no findings outside this period. This, together with the diverse conditions under which they came to light, precludes the possibility that they could have found their way into the country much earlier than their earliest finding. Otherwise a few seals would have certainly been found earlier. In addition, the fact that no more seals were found after 1853 implies that the discoveries of the seals were not completely accidental or mutually unrelated, as claimed at the time. Here we are reminded of the story that Lockhart recorded about the woman who admitted that the seals were brought to Ireland by an ancestor of hers who liked giving them away to friends in Ireland, and that the stories of finding them “in many places of undisturbed sepulture of great antiquity” were not true.
Needless to say, there is no way that we can ascertain that none of the seals were found under the conditions reported. It is more likely that the first few indeed were, and only later ones were assigned false provenance under pressure from an emerging market. In addition, many of the seals lacked information about their origin, beside the general claim that they came from Ireland. In other words, it was enough merely to misrepresent the source of a few seals in order to make the narrative develop in a certain direction. The misrepresentation, however, was not necessarily intended as a farce or forgery, at least not by the collectors and scholars involved. It is equally possible, that when a collector, such as the Duke of Northumberland, offered to pay for each new seal brought to him, people tried to meet the demand by supplying both the object and the story necessary to sell it."
As this far remove without testing of the seals it seems unlikely that we will know for certain their date or origin story.
The three seals from Tipperary (from Getty, 1850)
Seal No. 16-— Piltown Museum, found near Clonmel, Co. Tipperary.
Translation
"A man amidst blue clouds"
26.— Royal Irish Academy, found in a ploughed field near Borrisokane, in
1833.
Translation
"Protecting what has been sealed"
50.— Lady Glengal—was found in 1840 or 1841, immediately outside Cahir
Castle, at the west side, when removing some earth. With the Seal
were found some human bones, which mouldered into dust on exposure.
Tipperary
Translation
"To obtain one's wish"
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