Red dust on porcelain and other hints of forgery

[Bok]

A thing I noticed when browsing a local antique market is that some porcelain items had some sort of reddish dust on the unglazed underside. Could this kind of thing be an indication of faked aging?

Another thing I remarked are oily-iridiscent looking spots on parts of blue glazing. Items like white and blue Qing style looking jars and vases etc.

[peterp]

Dust that comes off? Some fakes indeed were intentionally made dirty, but this can often not removed. There are many types if dirt on antiques; without seeing what this looks like it is difficult to conceive what you mean.

[Bok]

Well, I could not take a picture in the shop unfortunately.
I scratched a bit, and it was coming off a bit.

Colour was reddish, orange-ish.

[Stan]

Sounds like Fakery to me, especially if it comes off easily.

[peterp]

Did you say you are in Taiwan? Be careful, in this place you will find two different types of dealers. One does not know much about porcelain and sells all at face value, the other knows, but knowingly sells fakes. The latter type may try to find out how much you understand, and if they see it is little they will sell you fakes or doubtable items.Few of those who really know porcelain sell only genuine antiques, or they sell expensive ones. Online it is even worse. Probably 99% are fakes. You must know your stuff to get real items now. It may be easier to get genuine antiques abroad nowadays.

[Bok]

Yes, I am in Taiwan.

I figured as much? I also noticed that a lot of items seemed to be the same in different shops, which is probably not very likely if they are genuine.

That would probably a good indication of forgery too if a shop sold a bunch of matching items, wouldn?t it?

Altogether, the few items I bought, were not expensive, so if it is all fake, the tuition fee paid was low.
Compared to newly made items, they are about the same in price or lower.

Does that even make sense economically to copy low profile items like commoner?s cups etc?
I can see how it makes sense for highly valued items, but for everyday ware?

[peterp]

Not necessarily anymore so, but ten or twenty years ago it was possibly profitable. The thing is that there are sellers who want to sell, but do not get genuine antiques anymore, so they can sell them even cheap fakes.
The strange thing is that a couple of years ago in Taiwan (south) some real antiques used to be cheaper  than a new item of the same quality. It is all not quite normal here too...not just on the other side where they make them.