These two bowls examples of late Ming blue-and-white ware that was exported in great quantities, often decorated with motifs intended to appeal specifically to a European market. The Portuguese were the first to carry this brilliant blue-and-white ware to Europe, via their extensive ocean trade links. The porcelain was created in Jingdezhen kilns, transported down river to the Portuguese settlement at Macao, where it was loaded onto ships known as "carraca."¹  "Carraca" was transformed to "kraak" in Dutch, which lent the name by which this porcelain was known in Holland, "Kraak ware".

The first example is a bowl decorated with three heraldic-style shields, each containing a seven-headed, half-tortoise, half-hydra creature (five heads are serpentine, two are human). The inscription scrolling behind the shields is rendered in Latin, and reads "Sapienti nihil novum," or "to the wise man, nothing is new."²  Many of the remaining elements of the bowl's design are of Chinese origin, such as Buddhist rosaries and pagodas, wave patterns and intertwining ribbons on the exterior, and flower scrolls, fruiting branches and a crane in a lotus pond on the interior.³

While the first example borrows only pictorial motifs, the second example also borrows its flask shape from Western sources. In the late sixteenth century, Spain annexed Portugal and took over its lucrative East Asian trade, which led to efforts by Jingdezhen ceramicists to generate wares to appeal to this new market. While this flask is decorated with such Chinese elements as taifu stones, mushrooms of immortality and floral vines, it is dominated by an image of the Spanish royal coat-of-arms, most likely copied from a silver coin minted during the reign of King Phillip II (r. 1556-98 CE).⁴

Spanish trade routes were concentrated on the Americas and the New World rather than to the east, but when in 1580 Spain annexed Portugal and her outposts, Spanish trade with the Orient gained momentum. The arms on this bottle were probably copied from a Spanish silver coin minted during the reign of King Philip II (reigned 1556-98).

(1) From the British Museum web page dedicated to the Kraak ware flask (lower image).

(2) From the British Museum web page dedicated to the Kraak ware bowl (upper image).

(3) Ibid.

(4) Op. cit.