Description:
"Kraak" porcelain bowl with a scalloped rim edge, a slightly curved or dished rim, a deeply curving bowl, and a footrim on its base, which was made for the export market - probably Dutch market. The interior of the bowl is painted in underglaze cobalt blue - the rim border has four reserves, two of peaches and the other two of a flowering peony, interspersed with diapering and ruyi heads; the inside border has four reserves of ovals with peaches and flowering peony interspersed between ribbons or scrolls; and the center well has a seated Chinese man with a fence to his left and a rock to his right with an aquatic landscape in the background. The exterior of the bowl is painted rather coarsely with four sections of ovals with dots and stripes. The footrim has been wiped free of glaze, but later on was drilled with a hole - presumably for hanging or display; the body is slightly rough, and there is some loss of glaze to the edge of the piece -so-called "moth eaten" edges characteristic of kraak porcelain. The term "kraak" is derived from the Portuguese word carrack - a vessel that carried this cargo back to the west - although other scholars have also suggested that the term could come from the Dutch verb "kraken" which means to break, a characteristic common among these thinly potted wares. This type of ware was very popular in the early 17th century for export to Holland and Portugal.– typically blue and white decoration divided into panels often decorated with a bird on a rock or seated Chinese figure, and with outer reserves of Taoist or Buddhist symbols. Kraak porcelain fragments have been excavated at several 17th-century sites in colonial America including St. Augustine, Florida; Jamestown and Kingsmill, Virginia; and at Ferryland, Newfoundland, Canada. This type of Chinese export porcelain bowl shape is called a "klapmuts," a Dutch word basically meaning a cap or a hat of a particular shape, which was the standard 17th-century headgear of the Dutch poor. The less expensive caps were made out of wool while the more expensive were fashioned of beaver felt. Klapmutsen, bowls with shallow rounded walls and a flattened rim, often with foliate edges, are completely unlike any Chinese forms. There are a number of competing and as yet unresolved theories regarding the origin of this shape, however it seems likely that it was of European origin. A Chinese klapmusten is depicted in Still Life with Lemons, Oranges and a Pomegranate, c.1620-1640 by Jacob van Hulsdonck, Getty Museum, museum number 86.PB.538.
Link to share this object record:
https://museums.fivecolleges.edu/detail.php?t=objects&type=ext&id_number=HD+2012.10 |
