Page 73 - Kraak Porcelain, Jorge Welsh

sprays or tasselled auspicious symbols, separated by
a decoration, but painted in the centre with naturalistic
Fig. a
Detail Still Life with Fruit,
Glassware and a Wanli Bowl
Willem Kalf, ( – )
The Metropolitan Museum of Art,
Maria DeWitt Jesup Fund,
(inv. no. . )
©Metropolitan Museum of Art,
New York
narrow radiating panels with strings of jewels and dots
or simply by thick blue lines. More unusual examples
of this group are decorated with panels enclosing two
Chinese boys at play, a scene rarely found on kraak
wares. In these pieces the panels are separated by tall
vases enclosing single flower sprays.
The underside of the rims is decorated with stylized
flower heads with long scrolling leaves. This decoration
is commonly used on bowls or klapmutsen while a motif
commonly found on dishes with flat, up-turned bracket-
lobed rims with panelled border decoration – such as
the example discussed in entry no. – is of two birds
perched on opposing trees with long thorny branches
growing downwards from the rim.
The low, v-shaped foot ring of these bowls is finely
potted and has the glaze carefully scraped o on its
edge. In contrast with otherkraak wares, the foot ring
of these bowls has no sand adhering from the kiln. The
imprinted marks seen on the underside of the present
bowl, resembling those of a woven textile, may have been
the result of a manufacturing method used by Chinese
potters, who would have placed the thin slab of porcelain
clay used to make the vessel onto a textile before
transferring it to a mould. Several dishes with flat, everted
rims with an imprinted textile pattern on the cavetto and
rim were recovered from theWitte Leeuw ( ).
Bowls of this size with comparable cavetto and rim
scenes or auspicious symbols include an example in the
Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam (inv. no. - - ),
another in the Schloß Favourite bei Rastatt in Baden-
Württemberg (inv. no. ) and a further one in the
Fries Museum in Leeuwarden (inv. no. ). The
Rijksmuseum collection also has an unusually small
bowl of this type ( cm diam.).
A bowl of slightly larger size ( cm diam.) with a
similar rim border, but with a central bird scene and
floral bracket-lobed panels on the cavetto separated
by narrow radiating panels of jewels and dots is found
in the Topkapi Saray Museum in Istanbul (inv. no.
/ ). This museum also has two bowls of about
this size decorated with similar rim borders. Both have
Chinese landscapes within the central medallions.
One has panels with birds and frogs on rocks separated
by narrow radiating panels of jewels and strings. The
other has panels with white cranes in front of lotus
plants separated by tasselled strings of pearls and
beads suspended from demi-flowers. Each is richly
adorned with Ottoman jewelled metal mounts (inv.
nos. / and / ). A slightly smaller bowl
( . cm diam.) with a comparable decoration to that