Antique China Marks

What marks are good for...

Chinese china marks

• Antique china marks on Chinese objects can NOT tell you who the manufacturer of an item is.
  Exceptions: the occasional shop or hall mark may indirectly indicate who made or ordered an item, but generally said, no maker's marks did exist in old China.
• Antique marks on Chinese ceramics only rarely tell you WHEN an item was made
  • An exception is the so-called 'dated porcelain', which only became popular in the second half of the 19th century, however.
  • 'Reign' marks theoretically indicate the period an item was supposedly made, but in reality, on ceramics of later reigns often marks of earlier reigns are found. Thus, reign marks cannot be relied on for dating.
  • A number of marks also contain dates of the cyclical calendar, but they are rare.
    
  
  Otherwise, the majority of Chinese marks do not allow dating ceramics based on the mark alone.

Marks on antique china from the Middle Kingdom basically were not manufacturer's marks before the advent of the republic. And, there is a multitude of different marks – not a large 'number' of marks, but rather a large number of mark 'types', all with different purpose or content.
Only many years after the empire became a republic porcelain items would begin to have the names of the 'companies' making them applied on the bottom. Please be aware, however, that even today porcelain is often made with old marks, sometimes even handwritten. The origin/maker of these items cannot be identified, usually, from the mark, as with antique marks.

• Antique china marks on European porcelain may tell you WHO the manufacturer was.
• In some instances they also may indicate the approximate year or period such an item was manufactured.

The antique china marks from Europe were basically all of the same type, that is, they are a kind of logo.
This, and the fact that in the whole of Europe there were much fewer china manufacturers at any one time than in China, makes it much easier to identify the origin of an item together – based on its mark alone.

An European mark may be used to identify the actual manufacturer, and possibly also the year or period it was made, as indicated by some features that changed over time. The marks of individual manufacturers, for example, were modified in specific ways, over time. These changes are known and records thereof exist, which allow collectors to decide the period or span of years during which an item was produced (except if it is a fake).

• Antique china marks that copied Chinese marks.
• Marks found on items made in China for export to Japan, and which later were also used on items made in Japan.
• Kiln marks, shop marks, artisan's marks
• Company marks, introduced after industrialization

Basically, many Japanese marks appear either similar to the Chinese or European marks. Usually, the earlier ones would rather resemble Chinese marks, but logo style marks as those used in Europe came into use early in the 20^th century, or a bit earlier. All the while handwritten shop and artisan's marks continued to exist in parallel to these modern marks (and some are still used to the present).

• Many early antique china marks on Japanese porcelain were actually copies of Chinese marks; especially some Ming dynasty marks are frequently found.
  
  
• Japan imported porcelain from China already more than 400 years ago, in the Ming dynasty. Some Japanese porcelain items thus imported had specific marks with names unrelated to the manufacturer or, which identify the type of this porcelain. The marks do only appear on Chinese export porcelain destined for Japan.

  The names used in the marks remained the same over the centuries and were later also used on items made in Japan. An item with such a name mark usually means that it either is an old Chinese item made for the Japanese market, or that it was made in Japan itself, most likely in the 19th century or later.
  
  

• The number of kilns in existence, in Japan, was always small compared to China. Many of their products have the kiln name as a mark. In some cases the products have a shop name (which usually was associated with a specific kiln), or an artisan's name. This may make it easier to identify the manufacturer or approximate time an item was actually produced.