Charger - Wanli? Kraak type - curious restoration

[haukech]

Dear All,
Enclosed a Ming? charger, 29cm wide and 4cm high.
As you can see it has a restoration as if gold. I had seen this on some pieces before which were generally done by Japanese.
As the general state is a big restoration i am scared to analyze further in any invasive way, even to try yo clean it too much.
Any comments and further notes welcome.
Thanks in advance.

[peterp]

Wanli, if it is Chinese. Cannot tell for sure without handling the plate. The Japanese have made some very good copies that are difficult to distinguish from the Chinese ones. For me, the dark tone of the blue color used on the plate edge/rim is a question. I have handled items on which the blue pigment tone is the only difference between the Chinese and Japanese Kraak items. The Japanese will attach kiln grit too.
The foot rim should be leaning inward, so that the plate can be hooked on the finger tips if it is Chinese.

As to the repair, this is called Kintsugi. I am using that too. This is a very old type of repair in which pieces originally were stuck together with lacquer (urushi) from the lacquer tree, which was also used to fill in missing pieces, and the whole was then covered with metal powder and at last polished; usually silver, gilt, copper is used, but the gilt is nowadays often replace by a mineral looking exactly the same, probably due to cost. Nowadays often epoxy is used for the repair because it easier and faster to apply and probably is more durable. The bottom looks like a western repair without restoring the glaze, so the repair was probably made with epoxy.

The idea of the traditional Japanese repair is making the repair aesthetically appealing without damaging the existing decoration or glaze. When doing a western type of repair it is sometimes inevitable damaging the surroundings of the break in the process of making the repair invisible. And theoretically the use of kintsugi items can continue.