Today chinese porcelain items with marks you may find or purchase are more likely fakes or newer items than authentic antiques.
Chinese porcelain marks red.
Reign marks can be found on chinese ceramics mainly from the early ming dynasty 15 th century through to the qing dynasty 1644.
In the world of ming and qing dynasty art knowing how to look at a reign mark is a key asset for any collector specialist or enthusiast to correctly identify the date and the value of a piece of chinese porcelain.
Consider the color of the marks and how they were applied to the porcelain piece.
In the guangxu period huge amounts of porcelain china were produced and many of these bear different kangxi reign marks.
All new marks are in the proper alphabetical order but the text will be red and in italics for a short time so as to highlight the newly added marks.
Qianlong nian zhi seems to indicate a date around 1970.
Some chinese antiques porcelain marks or pottery marks contain dates of the chinese 60 year cyclic calendar but these are actually quite rare cyclic calendar dates started to appear mainly on qianjiang style dated porcelain in the second half of the 19th century.
There was a brief time during the kangxi period in 1667 when the emperor issued an edict forbidding the use of his reign mark on porcelain in case the ceramics were smashed and discarded.
Probably the best example for this is the porcelain made during the late qing dynasty.
Mark on modern chinese porcelain spoon.
Marks of earlier periods have been used throughout almost the history of chinese porcelain.
But these are not marks proper but rather part of the signatures of porcelain artists.
In general the marks will be red or blue and hand painted or stamped.
Reign marks are usually four or six characters in length and can be found on the base or the side of an item.
If you see red marks the piece was likely created in the mid 19th century while pieces with blue marks were likely made later.
The most common marks on porcelain tend to be written in underglaze blue within a double circle.
There are about 200 new marks other chinese porcelain reports on this blog.
Zhongguo zhi zao china made.
Zhongguo china c.
Reign marks should be studied alongside the many different variations of hallmarks auspicious marks potters marks and symbols that you find on the bases of chinese porcelain throughout the ages.
Reign marks can play a pivotal role in helping to identify the period in which chinese artefacts were created.
Almost at the same time that the chinese invented porcelain they also invented marks and copies sometimes to learn sometimes to honor sometimes to deceive sometimes to replace sometimes just to meet a demand.
Mark on modern chinese porcelain spoon.
I zhongguo zhi zao china made.
Flower balls on c19th and c20th chinese porcelain 花球 huā qiú february 9 2019.