Antique China Marks
a comparison

China marks from different origins

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• Chinese marks
• European marks
• Japanese marks

What Chinese marks are good for... or what they can NOT do for you

Chinese china marks

• Marks on antique china of Chinese origin usually do 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, almost no factory and few other maker's marks did exist in ancient China before the 20th century.
• Antique marks on Chinese ceramics only rarely tell you WHEN an item was made. An exception are marks bearing a date of the cyclical 60-year calendar, but these were very few. 'Dated porcelain' with the above mentioned cyclical calendar year became only popular in the second half of the 19th century.
• 'Reign' and 'dynasty' marks do theoretically indicate the period during which an item was made, but in reality, ceramics frequently were made with reign marks of earlier reigns, for various reasons. Thus, reign marks also cannot be relied on for dating. More often than not they are not of the period. (The majority of all marks encountered on antiques are reign marks.)
  
• The above is especially true with export porcelain. Export porcelain showing Kangxi and Qianlong reign marks (four character marks) were mainly made during the late Qing dynasty, namely the Guangxu reign, and the early republic.

Simply said, the large majority of Chinese marks do not allow the dating of ceramics based on the mark.

Please be aware that even today Chinese porcelain is often made with old marks, sometimes even handwritten.
Many items do not have any marks at all. And... the original maker cannot be identified by antique china marks, marked or not. In this view Chinese porcelain is different from European and later Japanese porcelain.

Antique Chinese Marks

More on Chinese Pottery Marks

European china marks

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

Antique china marks from Europe are basically all of a similar type, that is, they are a kind of logo, showing which factory made a specific item.
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 generally much easier to identify the origin of an item together – based on its mark alone.

European marks may be used to identify the actual manufacturer, and possibly also the year or period it was made in; this is often indicated by mark features that were modified over time. As the changes that the marks of individual manufacturers went through over time is known, they can be used for dating. There do exist records of such changes, allowing collectors to decide the period or span of years during which an item was produced (except if it is a fake).

European pottery marks

Japanese china marks

Basically, four types of marks are found on Japanese porcelain.

• Japanese porcelain may have marks that copied Chinese marks.
• Some marks appearing on Japanese porcelain are the same as those used on Chinese porcelain, that was made In China and marked specifically for the Japanese market, in the distant past.
  
• Kiln marks, shop marks, artisan's marks
• Company marks, introduced after industrialization, in the 19th century
  

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 common use early in the 20th 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 later Japanese porcelain, and on Chinese export porcelain destined for Japan.
  The content of those marks remained the same over the centuries. 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 specific manufacturer or approximate time an item was actually produced.

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