blue and white bowl

peter · Dec 27, 2013, 20:09:23

Ming dynasty underglaze blue bowl
A Ming dynasty bowl with blue underglaze decoration in excellent condition.

(Pictures by courtesy of John, Burma)

Stan · Mar 07, 2014, 01:24:45

Hi Wiep, the mark on your bowl has a double ring and 4 character mark inside the double ringed circle, I have looked at ming marks and I could not find one like this, they all had 6 marks inside, the ones with 4 character marks did not have a circle and the foot on yours dose not match ming, I would think your bowl is a fake, the decoration also not period in my view, lets see what others think, thanks.

peterp · Mar 09, 2014, 11:29:43

I'm afraid I cannot agree on this, Stan. The four character mark is well known, even with double circle. My (Chinese language) marks book says it was mostly used from mid to late 15th century, and again during the Jiajing reign (1522-1566).
Later in the Ming dynasty (Wanli?) another four character mark "Daming Nianzhi", using a different character for "made" was also in use.

Here is a link of examples:tinyurl.com/k53rlgo
It is impossible to discount all of them as being new or fake, in my view.

Stan · Mar 10, 2014, 05:30:33

sorry about that, I could not find anything when I searched for ming marks like this one and the color did not look right either.

Stan · Mar 10, 2014, 05:41:00

Where can I get a book like yours Peter, I have limited reading material?

Stan · Mar 10, 2014, 05:51:52

By the way, Peter, cool web site, thanks, it to bad I can't read Chinese, I found several items that I have.

peterp · Mar 10, 2014, 09:17:19

Stan, the marks book by Gerald Davison is the only one available in English I know of.
Do you have this one? His web address is: www.chinesemarks.com/book.html
(The Zhuanti characters (archaic characters) on the right of the blue vase are printing fonts. In handwritten marks they may look slightly different.

Apart from these I know only of some books published in the early 20th century, which contain a limited number of Chinese marks.
Nowadays, a lot of the marks we know were found on shards during archaelologic excavations, construction sites, etc..

The Chinese book I useseems to be the most common in the Chinese speaking world contains some 1600 marks, only about half of what G. Davison's book has. Don't know if his also includes Yixing teapot marks. These may add up.

Here are the results of a Google image search showing it: http://tinyurl.com/q2q48f3
Hanshan.com and some others seem to be selling it. Be not dececived, however, by the English on the cover. It is all Chinese, from the index to the last page.

peterp · Mar 10, 2014, 17:51:06

> I found several items that I have

Which ones I wonder... ?

Stan · Mar 12, 2014, 09:40:58

OK, Peter, I have a couple things, one is a cloisonn? bowl with imperial dragons, Identical to the ones shown, and same mark, and I have a lot of Ming jugs and bowls but not much value because a lot of them were made, but I do have a large collection, if you ever get up this way I would be honored to have you view them, I have a lot of items that I have not put on your site because I do not thing they are that valuable, I could be wrong though.