The large dish, with deep rounded cavetto and wide flat mouth and upturned rim, is thin-walled, light in weight, and supported on a low, narrow, v-shaped foot slanted inwards around a recessed base. The painting technique combines rather casual pencil-like lineament, short parallel-line fillers and details with slick washes of pigment in distinct tones of greyish or silvery blue. The focus is the human figure. In the central area on the interior of the dish two scholars in official dress, along with a servant, converse near a balustrade, a rocky outcropping above. The circular panel is framed by a narrow border of formalized pomegranates and stiff leaves. Eight large panels alternating with narrower ones occupy the cavetto up to the mouth rim. Each of four of the large panels frames a single human figure, the same in each panel, a peasant hoisting a long tool across his shoulders, in a reduced landscape setting. These scenes alternate with four panels containing stylized floral arrangements including tulips and carnations with Iznik-style blossoms. The eight primary panels are separated by narrow scroll-filled bands, roughly penciled, quirky, primitive in character. The exterior walls are decorated with six petal-shaped panels containing floral elements alternating with narrow panels, four with bamboo stalks and two with floral and fruiting branches. The thin glaze of the base reveals the white porcelain body and exhibits some irregularities and a minor presence of kiln grit also adhering to the unglazed foot rim. Fritting is apparent along the mouth rim.
If kraak ware was decoratively rich and complex during the Wanli period, turning to the impressive Yuan Jingdezhen export porcelain style, there was more to come. With a lapse of imperial patronage and complete dependence on foreign and common domestic markets during the final decades of the Ming, the kilns rose to the occasion by producing as relevant and eye-catching creations as possible. In one category of kraak wares, the complexity of subject matter and presentation was greater than ever before. The focus was the human figure in many guises. Sometimes the subjects are simply engaged in everyday activities and occupations. Others represent characters from the popular novels and dramas of the day, the idiosyncratic scarps and cliffs providing suitable stage and theatre for such literary subjects.
Although the themes were inspired by the tastes and pastimes of the Chinese, the kraak wares found in Chinese burials of the period, that in itself a rare occurrence, are not of the quality represented by this category of wares. The preservation of a significant number of examples in the Middle East, however, suggests what was the most important port of call for this impressive style, although a good number are also held in collections in the Netherlands and Portugal, where many had arrived during the 17th century. Interestingly, many of these examples are characterized by decoration that is silvery or greyish blue in color, like the present, suggesting that a high-quality imported cobalt ore was not being used to create the pigment. Examples most closely allied with the present include a number illustrated below in figures 1 through 5.
Fig. 1: Kraak porcelain dish with figural design, Ming dynasty, 2nd quarter 17th century, after Lisa Vinhai and Jorge Welsh, Kraak Porcelain: The Rise of Global Trade in the Late 16th and early 17th Centuries, London, 2008, no. 51, p. 283.
Fig. 2: Kraak porcelain dish with figural design, Ming dynasty, 2nd quarter 17th century, after Lisa Vinhai and Jorge Welsh, Kraak Porcelain: The Rise of Global Trade in the Late 16th and early 17th Centuries, London, 2008, no. 53, p. 291.
Fig. 3: Kraak porcelain dish with figural design, Ming dynasty, 2nd quarter 17th century, the Lurie collection, after Teresa Canepa, Jingdezhen to the World: The Lurie collection of Chinese Export Porcelain from the Late Ming Dynasty, Chicago, 2019, no. 94, p, 263.
Fig. 4: Kraak porcelain dish with figural design, Ming dynasty, 2nd quarter 17th century, Topkapi Saray Museum, Istanbul, after Regina Krahl and John Ayers, Chinese Ceramics in the Topkapi Saray Museum, Istanbul, vol. II, Yuan and Ming Dynasty Porcelains, London, 1986, no. 1602, p. 802.
Fig. 5: Kraak porcelain dish with figural design, Ming dynasty, 2nd quarter 17th century, one of three, Topkapi Saray Museum, Istanbul, after Regina Krahl and John Ayers, Chinese Ceramics in the Topkapi Saray Museum, Istanbul, vol. II, Yuan and Ming Dynasty Porcelains, London, 1986, no. 1603, p. 802.
Details:
