Kangxi Kraak Style Blue and White Dish

Kangxi Kraak Style Blue and White Dish
From our Chinese Blue and White Collection, a rare Kangxi Period (1662-1722) porcelain dish depicting a stylized version of an earlier Ming Dynasty kraakware design, featuring an eight-sided buddhist wheel or star in the center medallion, surrounded by ogival panels of buddhist emblems, auspicious symbols, and swatiska motifs in the outer border.
Within the vast gamut of Kangxi blue and white wares in general, there is a much smaller sub-category of Kangxi wares that were made in imitation of earlier Ming Dynasty kraak porcelain. While these "Kangxi kraak revival" dishes (for lack of a better term) are themselves a discrete and small sub-category, they are nevertheless a known group, and there are at least a few documented examples in the secondary literature. Most of these pieces date to the latter part of the Kangxi period, usually 1700-1720, and we do carry a few of these dishes because we have always been fascinated by this group. This particular example is one of a few published and even earlier variants, with an essentially identical plate published in Maura Rinaldi's, Kraak Porcelain, A Moment In the History of Trade, p. 232, plate 293, where she dates this style to 1680. This dish is a fine and rare example and a credit to any blue and white or kraakware collection.
Size and condition: 8 1/2 inches in diameter, 1 1/2 inches deep, 4-5 small rim frits, several small chips to footrim, a good ring when tapped.