page_title: Kraak ware
section_title: Style
hierarchical_section_title: Kraak ware / Style
caption_attribution_description: Deutsch: Chinese porcellain plate Made by order of the Bavarian House of Wittelsbach Wanli Period; Ming Dynasty Münchener Residenzmuseum Photographer: user:Dr. Meierhofer Date: 19.08.2006
context_page_description: Kraak ware or Kraak porcelain is a type of Chinese export porcelain produced mainly in the late Ming Dynasty, in the Wanli reign, but also in the Tianqi and the Chongzhen. It was among the first Chinese export wares to arrive in Europe in mass quantities, and was frequently featured in Dutch Golden Age paintings of still life subjects with foreign luxuries.
  The wares have "suffered from imprecise terminology", sometimes being loosely used for many varieties of Chinese export blue and white pottery. Strictly defined, it "is distinguished by the arrangement of its ornament into panels; these usually radiate to a bracketed rim notorious for its liability to chip". It is a sub-class of Jingdezhen ware, mostly made as "deep bowls and wide dishes", decorated with motifs from nature, in a style not used on wares for the domestic Chinese market.
  The quality of the porcelain used to form Kraak ware is much disputed among scholars; some claim that it is surprisingly good, in certain cases indistinguishable from that produced on the domestic market; others imply that it is a dismal shadow of the truly fine ceramics China was capable of producing.
context_section_description: Kraak ware is almost all painted in the underglaze cobalt blue and white porcelain style that was perfected under the Ming dynasty, although a few examples of dishes over-painted with vitreous enamel glaze have survived.  It is often decorated with variations on the more traditional motifs found on Chinese porcelain, such as stylized flowers (peonies and chrysanthemums) and Buddhist auspicious emblems.  However, most characteristic of Kraak decoration is the use of foliated radial panels.  In other words, the surface of the porcelain is divided into segments, each containing its own discrete image.
  Shapes included dishes, bowls, and vases. Kraak ware bowls fall into roughly two types; the first is a deep, unrimmed Chinese style bowl, taking roughly the same shape as the Qing enameled cup, (at left). The second type are called klapmutsen. A klapmuts is somewhat akin to what we would today call a soup-bowl—a broader-based, rimmed style that was new in the Chinese repertoire, and seems to have been exclusively exported to Europe. (Two such examples are at the center of de Heem's Still Life, above: one holds fruit, and the other a shaved ham.)   
  The specialist Maura Rinaldi suggests that the latter type was designed specifically to serve a European clientele, since there do not seem to be many surviving examples elsewhere in the world, even in the spectacular Topkapı Palace collection, which houses the most extensive selection of Kraak ware of all.  Noting the importance of soups and stews in European diet, Rinaldi proposes that klapmusten were developed to satisfy a foreign demand, noting that the heavy, long-handled, metal spoon that is common in Europe would have toppled and chipped the high-walled Chinese bowl.
caption: Relatively unusual Kraak armorial porcelain, for the Wittelsbach family; Wanli reign
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