Monkey & Deer Dish

[kardinalisimo]

Late Qing/Republic?
Thanks

[Stan]

Mid 20th century or later I would think.

[kardinalisimo]

Thanks for the reply Stan. Any reasons to think so?

[Stan]

The subject matter, Monkeys playing with deers, the only one I know that did anything like this would have been Yabu Meizan a famous Japanese potter, although this is Chinese the quality does not look period and I do not think they did a mark like this in the 19th century but later in the 20th century, lets see what Peter says, it looks to me like an older 19th century piece that has been painted over.

[kardinalisimo]

Stan, I will have to disagree about the subject.
99% of the depictions on the Chinese porcelain ( and other art) have a certain meaning (mostly auspicious)
Here you have:
Bird (que), deer (lu), wasp(feng) and monkey(hou), forming the auspicious phrase "juelu fenghou" or 'May you receive high
rank and emolument" or something like that.
You can see the pattern on late Ming doucai pieces as well early and late Qing.

And then, every combination of flower, animal, bird, symbol, immortal, god/goddesses etc... have a meaning.
I started documenting the patterns a time ago but my desktop got broken and I have not done it for a while. When I fix it I'll try to sort everything out.
The other thing I was doing was to sort the animals, flowers, faces, landscape patterns etc according to the way they are depicted during the different periods. It is kind of time consuming because I am getting the info and the images from Chinese websites and you know google translates not that good.

[Stan]

Don't get me wrong, Im not saying they never drew animals, Im saying they have never drawn a monkey playing with a deer, it would have been a monkey playing with a monkey, Im not a 100% sure that I am correct about this but I have never seen this on Chinese Porcelain only on Japanese and if you look and the Japanese porcelain by Yabu Meizan then you would see what kind of Quality I'm talking about, I think if the Chinese were trying to copy Yabu Meizan they would have tried to match the quality as well, also the porcelain looks to white to be 19th century.

[kardinalisimo]

www.trocadero.com/stores/paha/items/665485/item665485.html

google juelu fenghou and you will see the doucai pieces as well.

[Stan]

I would have to see it at a High Auction house or museum, I can't trust trocadero.com for authentication.

[peterp]

I feel this is authentic, Stan. This is a field it may be difficult to get mor experience in the west. This is Chinese taste porcelain. kardinalisimo is right here, this is full of Chinese auspicious things. You will hardly find them on export porcelain though, because in other languages the auspicious meanings get lost. You will find the same auspicious signs on wood carving and in paintings too.

Here is an early example of this theme, apparently a stone or brick rubbing from the Han dynasty:
catalog.digitalarchives.tw/item/00/60/7a/5d.html

This is is only average quality porcelain. Most of this type of bowls were made in the Tongzhi and Guangxu reigns, some may be later. Up to now I have not seem many fakes.  The mark is a Ming Chenghua mark, but this would be late Qing to republic.

I want to add that pine (tree) and lingzhi (mushroom) have the auspicious meaning of 'longevity'.

[kardinalisimo]

When I first started checking the Chinese websites I got very lost becuase the pattern names were made of different words put together and google translation made no sense. I had very hard time understanding the meaning of the scenes with the Examination system.

[Stan]

Sorry Kardinalisimo, I stand corrected, I would have never guessed that to be 19th century, your right Peter, I have been looking at to much Chinese export Porcelain.

[Stan]

Peter, what do you think about the plue color on the bottom?

[peterp]

That is all right, Stan. You will see it on many items with this type of foot, made in the Tongzhi reign and later. The color may have existed earlier, probably already in the Daoguang, but there are fewer items from these periods. Production was disturbed due to internal strife and disturbances in China, during those reigns.

This is a Chinese language image search. Please note that I do not indicate this are all authentic, but as far down as I looked most of them are. You will find the blue foot rim on some of them.
tinyurl.com/qzdfm83

[Stan]

Thanks Peter, I learn something everyday.