Market Street Chinatown Stoneware Jar

Archaeologists found this stoneware jar in a trash pit near an adobe that was leased to Chinese business owners, most likely to the Tuck Wo grocery store. Jars like this were made to ship food. Manufacturers filled them up and sealed them tight with wax for the voyage across the Pacific Ocean to San Francisco. From San Francisco, merchants sold them to Chinese grocers all over California. Jars with spouts, like this one, were used for shipping liquids: soy sauce, vinegar, oil, oyster sauce, and other seasonings. Jars with wider openings were used for larger foods like pickled vegetables, preserved duck eggs, or rock sugar. Stoneware jars like this were made in large workshops in Guangdong Province in southern China. Potters fired special clays in an oven to over 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit until the silica particles in the clay would melt together like glass. This made the pottery hard as a rock, perfect for shipping food over long distances. For more information, visit http://www.chinesemuseum.historysanjose.org/digital-exhibits/chinatownhere/object-gallery/stoneware-jar/.