page_title: Kraak ware
section_title: Name
hierarchical_section_title: Kraak ware / Name
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 porcelain is believed to be named after the Portuguese ships (Carracks), in which it was transported.  Carrak—or caracca in Italian or Spanish—is itself believed to be a derivative of the Arabic term for the type of trading ships used in Renaissance Mediterranean trade:  qaraquir, meaning simply merchant vessels.  Although the link with Carrak ships is generally accepted as the root of the name Kraak ware, other origins of the label have also been proposed. For example, Rinaldi points out that in Dutch the verb kraken means to break - a characteristic that certainly is common among Kraak wares.  Moreover, the term refers to the type of shelves that often displayed import blue and white porcelains in Friesland, in the north of the Netherlands.
caption: Jan Davidsz de Heem, Still Life with Fruit and Lobster, second half of 17th century; Oil on canvas, 75 × 105 cm; Museum Boymans-van Beuningen, Rotterdam
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