Dish
Category
Ceramics
Date
c. 1600 - c. 1649
Materials
Hard paste porcelain with underglaze blue (cobalt oxide) decoration
Measurements
368 mm
Place of origin
Jingdezhen
Order this imageCollection
Dunham Massey, Cheshire
NT 929323
Summary
Dish, hard paste porcelain, round with a wide flat rim, probably made in Jingdezhen, Jiangxi province, China, first half of the seventeenth century, decorated in underglaze blue in the kraak style with panels containing auspicious fruit and objects around the rim and with an octagonal image in the centre showing a pair of birds on the edge of a rocky stream with peonies growing nearby.
Full description
The term kraak is used to indicate Chinese porcelain produced for European markets in the sixteenth century and the first half of the seventeenth century, with a specific style of panelled decoration. The word is thought to be a Dutch transliteration of the Portuguese term caracca, indicating the type of ship used by the Portuguese for their trade with Asia. The central image is in the Chinese tradition of album and fan paintings of bird-and-flower subjects that goes back to the Song and Yuan dynasties (960-1279 and 1271-1368 respectively). References: Emile de Bruijn, Borrowed Landscapes: China and Japan in the Historic Houses and Gardens of Britain and Ireland, London, Philip Wilson Publishers in association with the National Trust, 2023, pp. 17-8 (fig. 1), and see further references listed there.
Provenance
Bequeathed to the National Trust by the 10th Earl of Stamford, 1976.