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MING PORCELAIN CENSER: REAL OR FAKE?

by Mario
(Tecate B.C Mexico)

Recently I bought in a flea market what it looks to be a white and blue porcelain square censer, with clearly porcelain age signs: multiple crackles, rust spots and more. Each side has in the top a head of a goat with a hole in his mouth, and a pond scene. In one superior border has six characters writing by hand, and it seems to be the marks from de Ming dynasty, Wanli period.

Dimensions: 19 cm tall, 17 cm width. 19 cm deep.

I post pictures from the object, I hope you can see it, and give me your opinions.


Thank you for reading my message, and for your help.

Comments for MING PORCELAIN CENSER: REAL OR FAKE?

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censer
by: peter

Hello,
In my view this is a very low quality fake. The reasons that I think so are several:
1. The shape is odd. Usually, Chinese ceramics adhere to certain traditional shapes. This one is nothing traditional.
2. The painting is generally of inferior quality. For example the window with the ducks is off-center at the top, the band decoration just below the front head looks more Japanese. The mark position is off-center. The horizontal line is not straight, etc.
3. This type of duck decoration would be Yuan or early Ming rather than Wanli, as far as I know.
4. The third, fourth and last characters of the mark are almost unreadable. Further, the character for "li" in Wanli seems to be wrong. It looks as if it is written as "里", whereas it should be "曆". The impression here is, as if the person drawing the characters was not sure of the strokes of the more complex characters (third, fourth and last), and tried to hide this by unclear writing.

Due to the oddness of this all I could only conclude that this is a modern creation, possibly not even made in China.

My personal view...

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