Kraak dish
Category
Ceramics
Date
c. 1610 - 1635
Materials
porcelain, underglaze cobalt blue
Measurements
50.8 cm diameter
Order this imageCollection
Wallington, Northumberland
NT 581681
Caption
When this beautiful blue-and-white dish arrived on European shores as part of a cargo from China, no European could yet match the exceptional craftsmanship evident in its manufacture. The art of making porcelain in its perfectly white hard-paste form was unknown in the West until the early 18th century. Blue-and-white china was first imported to Europe by the Portuguese and Spanish, and then in the 17th and 18th centuries by the Dutch and English. Its unique qualities ensured it found a ready market, and the Western passion for collecting blue-and-white Chinese porcelain lasted for several centuries. The product became known as ‘china’ because of its origins and came to represent for Europeans a notion of ‘exotic’ elegance and sophistication. The type of decorative design on this exquisite large dish is known as kraak, perhaps after the type of ships (known as carraca) that first traded with Asia. Here it consists of complex religious symbols, including a carp turning into a dragon, a flaming wheel, a fan and a gourd, which would have been largely unfamiliar to Western audiences.
Summary
Porcelain decorated in underglaze cobalt blue, large kraak ware dish finely painted with floral and Daoist motifs around the rim, and in the centre with a depiction of Kui Xing, the god of examinations, with a carp transforming into a dragon, produced in Jingdezhen by unknown workshop and kiln, Jiangxi province, China, around 1610-35.
Full description
From 1570 mass-produced porcelain was exported from China to Japan, Europe and the Americas. The Portuguese were the first to import it on ocean-faring vessels, known to the Dutch as carraca or kraken, which led to its identification in Holland as kraaksporselein.1 In England, it was initially described as 'carrack' or 'carrick' ware, but by the mid-seventeenth century such porcelain was commonly called ‘Cheney’ or ‘China-ware’, after the generic Iranian word for Chinese ceramics, chini.2 In 1640, an Exeter merchant noted both terms in his account books: ‘Paid Mr. White a Londonner … for a parcel of Carrick, or Cheney. Viz a basin & ewre, 11 dishes of severall sizes, & a vinegar spowt, £1.13s.0d’.3 Today kraak ware primarily refers to blue-painted bowls and dishes in various sizes, which are thin, lightweight and stackable for economical transport. Such wares were also made for domestic consumption, as examples have been found in Chinese tombs.4 This large kraak ware dish at Wallington, Northumberland, made in Jingdezhen in about 1610–35, is of exceptionally fine quality. It is close in date to a similar dish in the Residenz, Munich, painted with the coat of arms of Wittelsbach, perhaps, after a 1618 bookplate, commissioned for Maximilian I, Elector of Bavaria (1573–1651).5 Since at least the early fourteenth century, such large dishes had been produced in China for export to Islamic countries, for use in communal feasting. In the West, they were used as basins for porcelain ewers or for serving vessels for fruit and salads.6 The Wallington dish has a common radiating border design incorporating the standard emblems of the eight Daoist Immortals – such as tassels, fans, scrolls, lanterns and double gourds – alternating with floral sprays and fruiting branches. However, the central image, usually crickets, deer or flower baskets, is a figure in official court dress holding a fragrant sprig from an osmanthus tree (Osmanthus fragans), a symbol of success in the imperial civil service examinations, the jinshi degree. This is the scholar Kui Xing, god of examinations. He is balancing on the head of a carp transforming into a dragon, which is leaping up the powerful, churning waves created by a waterfall, the Dragon Gate, which blocks his route to the imperial palace, visible in the distance beyond the rocks and mist. In Daoist legend, only the most persistent carp succeeded in passing over the waterfall, whereupon they metamorphosed into dragons to be presented at court. Similarly, only the top scholars passed the gruelling examinations to earn a place in China’s bureaucracy. For candidates not from the wealthy gentry class, who were too poor to pay for extra tuition, prayers to the god of examinations offered hope. The subject of this dish would have appealed to the wealthy scholar-literati class, whose patronage of the arts during the last decades of the Ming Dynasty (1368–1644), replaced that of the troubled imperial household. The dish may have arrived at Wallington through Lady Maria Trevelyan, née Wilson (1772–1852), whose husband was Sir John Trevelyan, 5th Baronet (1761–1846). Her mother was the collector Dame Jane Wilson (1749–1818), who in 1777 inherited Charlton House, near Greenwich, the Jacobean mansion built in 1607–12 by Sir Adam Newton, 1st Baronet (d.1630), which is depicted in her portrait (see NT 584397). The dish may have been acquired by Newton at the New Exchange in the Strand, opened in 1608 by Robert Cecil, 1st Earl of Salisbury (1563–1612); his step-brother Thomas Cecil, 1st Earl of Exeter (1542–1623), perhaps owned a similar kraak ware dish with a Daoist-theme, now at Burghley House, Lincolnshire.7 Text adapted from Patricia F. Ferguson, Ceramics: 400 Years of British Collecting in 100 Masterpieces, London, Philip Wilson Publishers, 2016, pp. 14–15. Notes 1 Sargent 2012, p. 97. 2 The term 'carrack' was used in England as early as 1596, see Glanville 1990, p. 342. 3 Thomas N. Brushfield, 'The Financial Diary of a Citizen of Exeter (John Hayne), 1631-43', Transactions of the Devonshire Association for the Advancement of Science, Literature, and Art, etc, vol. 33 (1901), p. 53, cited in Glanville 1990, p. 351. 4 Canepa 2008, p. 18. 5 Eikelmann 2009, cat. no. 5 and p. 451, fig. 2. 6 Evelyn 1699, p. 177. 7 Glanville 2007-8; Impey 1998, cat. no. 68.
Provenance
Possibly acquired by Sir Adam Newton (d. 1630) of Charleton House, Greenwich; possibly by descent to Lady Maria Trevelyan, née Wilson (1772–1852), wife of Sir John Trevelyan, 5th Baronet (1761–1846) of Wallington Hall, Northumberland; thence by descent at Wallington until donated to the National Trust together with the rest of the house and its contents, 1941.
Credit line
The Trevelyan Collection, Wellington, Northumberland, National Trust Collections
References
Canepa 2008: Teresa Canepa, Kraak Porcelain: The Rise of Global Trade in the Late 16th and Early 17th Centuries, London, Jorge Welsh Books, 2008, p. 18. Eikelmann 2009: Renate Eikelmann (ed.), Die Wittelsbacher und das Reich der Mitte: 400 Jahre China und Bayern, Munich, Hirmer Verlag, 2009, cat. no. 5 and p. 451, fig. 2. Evelyn 1699: John Evelyn, Acetaria: A Discourse of Sallets, London, B. Tooke, 1699, p. 177. Ferguson 2016: Patricia F. Ferguson, Ceramics: 400 Years of British Collecting in 100 Masterpieces, Philip Wilson Publishers, 2016, pp. 14–5. Glanville 1990: Philippa Glanville, Silver in Tudor and Early Stuart England: A Social History and Catalogue of the National Collection 1480–1660, London, V&A Publications, 1990., pp. 342 and 351. Glanville 2007-08: Philippa Glanville, ‘Oriental Porcelain in 16th- and 17th-Century England’, Transactions of the Oriental ceramics Society, vol. 72 (2007-08), pp. 69–72 Impey 1998: Oliver R. Impey, The Cecil Family Collects: Four Centuries of Decorative Arts from Burghley House, Alexandria (VA), Art Services International, 1998, cat. no. 68. Sargent 2012: William R. Sargent, Treasures of Chinese Export Ceramics from the Peabody Essex Museum, New Haven and London, Peabody Essex Museum, 2012, p. 97.
