Dish with flowers and auspicious motifs

The white porcelain body of the small, round dish is embellished with a composition of blossoming flowers and auspicious motifs scattered on the rim. The rim is further decorated with paneled geometric and stylized patterns. The decoration is painted in blue, red, green, purple, and yellow overglazes. The enamel colors are fresh, vivid and include iron-red and brown. The contours and details are rendered in thick black lines. The patterns were rapidly painted with some irregularities. The style of the decoration identifies the piece as a Kraak ware, made in Japan for Dutch export.

The earliest known written reference to Kraak porcelain dates from 1638. It is a memorandum sent on 12 April by the director of the VOC (Dutch East Asia Company) in Amsterdam to the Hoge Regering (the Dutch governor’s office in Batavia) specifying which porcelain assortments were most in demand in the Netherlands. In this document the terms craek and caraek, referring to Kraak porcelain bowls and plates is mentioned. The origin of the name was the large Portuguese ships that were used in the Asia trade. These were called carracks and became well-known after the Dutch captured two of these and sold their cargoes in Amsterdam at an auction. The cargoes included thousands of porcelains and attracted the attention of the wealthy nobility in Northern Europe.