Marks of earlier periods have been used throughout almost the history of Chinese porcelain. Almost at the same time the Chinese invented porcelain, they invented "copies" - either to honour, or to deceive for financial gain. You can any day find a 20th century identical pair of bowls, one marked "made in china", the other one marked "Kangxi Nian Zhi". Marks are still one of the best means we have to identify the period during which a certain piece of Chinese porcelain is made, whatever the mark actually say. Correctly understood it is like the fingerprint of the potter and his time.

This marks section right now illustrates more than 800 different, mostly Chinese marks. In the navigation panel to the left you will find still more groups and within the pages further links to relevant sections, and also when possible large close-up's of the entire piece and its mark.

The marks might be bewilderingly difficult to recognize and it might even be hard to see if it is Japanese or Chinese. As a general rule Chinese marks are more regular and the characters within the mark, are mostly of about the same sizes. If the mark looks more like an artist's signature, the mark might be Japanese. You can try to see if you can see what I mean by trying to spot the one Japanese mark there is in the picture to the right.

To sort this subject up somehow, marks could be red or blue, handwritten or applied with a rubber stamp. All red marks on the picture to the right are rubber stamped except the Japanese, which is actually a 19th century Fukagawa 'orchid' mark.

Modern marks are mostly red while older marks are mostly blue.

Marks done with raised enamels are really rare and COULD be very good but are also just because of that often used on modern souvenir pieces.

Marks incorporating western characters do not occur before the 1890's and almost all we see are after the 1950's.

And, anything marked "Made in China" is usually brand new.

Theoretically, any mark at the base of a piece of Chinese porcelain should be the reign title of the Emperor during which period the piece was made. Theoretically again, a pieces carrying the mark Da Qing Qianlong Nian Zhi should thus have been commissioned by the Chinese court to be used by them during the Qianlong periond (1736-95) of the Qing dynasty. This would be very nice since one of those vases kind of marks are interesting to know about, but when met with are almost always very recent copies. Look at it this way, there are genuine Rembrandt paintings and genuine Picasso paintings and there are genuine Imperial Chinese Porcelain marks, but they are rare, ok, and genuine pieces with genuine Imperial marks are NOT sold at eBay for a few hundred US$.

On the other hand - again - while I am writing this I get an email about a narcissus bowl bought at a flea market in California for 50 cents, which turns out to be a Guangxu Mark and Period piece with the date 1887, and worth considerably more then 50 cents, so - there went that good piece of advice ... so, lets look into the Imperial reign marks too then.

Here is two marks from the Qianlong period. One in regular script and one "seal" mark.

Imperial reign marks are like all Chinese texts read from top to bottom and from right to left. The first character is thus the one at top right as in the figure. The marks are also written in one, two or three columns or rows. If it is written all in one horizontal row - and not in a museum - it is most probably a fake since this is an early Ming feature and then we are talking tens of thousands of $. Most dealers know this.

Character 1 reads Da meaning "great" and is the normal first character in most Ming and Qing marks. This is very easy to memorize and than you will always know the right "up" direction of these marks.
Character 2 spells out the dynasty as Ming or as in this example Qing dynasty.
Character 3 and 4 is the emperors reign title which is always in two characters, in this case Shun Zhi
Character 5 and 6 merely says nian zhi or specifically 'period' 'make', which does have a different flavor than 'period' 'made'. I just mention this, but this is the norm anyway.

During the Kangxi (1662-1722) period, marks with symbols and characters other then the reign title became common. The characters are often the name of the place the piece seems to have been made for. These are called "Hall marks". It is also interesting to remember that specifically 18th century export porcelain to the west is almost never marked while most pieces made for the Chinese common people are actually quite often marked. All this commoner's porcelain is called Min yao meaning "people's wares" as opposed to the Imperial wares which is called Guan yao.

Regarding genuine marks it is the handwriting and several other small details together with the glaze, shape, decoration and other technical distinctions of a piece of porcelain which makes it possibly at all to assign a piece to its correct period. This is VERY difficult and marks should be the last thing to consider when trying to determine a piece's authenticity.

This marks section is therefore mostly a guide for you who want to know what the marks says rather than for dating the piece. Best of luck with your collection.

Best regards,
Jan-Erik Nilsson

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