A Chinese blue and white Chinese kraak porcelain wine pot. Wanli, 1573-1619

This Kraakware wine pot is a moulded with panels, it is thickly potted and has an S shaped handle. The six moulded panels that surround the body are painted using the pencil-drawn technique, that is to say it is line-drawing without the normal use of coloured washes that create tone.  The fine, briskly executed brushwork depicts flowering chrysanthemum.

Related works

For three Ming Kraak ware wine pots : Maura Rinaldi, Kraak Porcelain, A Moment in the History of Trade (Bamboo Publishing,1989), pp. 182-183.

For another Ming winepot : Transitional Wares and Their Forerunners (The Oriental Ceramic Society of Hong Kong, 1981), p. 82 Item 27.

A further Ming porcelain wine ewer of this form and design was recovered from the wreck of the Dutch ship Witte Leeuw of 1613. See : The Ceramic Load of the Witte Leeuw 1613 (Edited by C.L van der Pijl-Ketel, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, 1982, pp. 128 and 129. The catalogue illustrates a related wine ewer from a Flemish painting in the National Gallery in London dated to c.1620 on page 34.

A Ming blue and white porcelain wine pot of this type but with tonal painting of a slightly earlier type dated to 1590-1619 is illustrated in `Ming Blue and White Porcelain, The Drs.A.M. Sengers Collection (S.Marchant & Son, November 2001) p. 72, plate 51

A Ming porcelain wine pot of this type is in the Topkapi Museum see :Regina Krahl, Chinese Ceramics in the Topkapi Saray Museum Istanbul, A Complete Catalogue II, Yuan and Ming Porcelains (Sotheby’s 1986) p. 757, pl. 1403.