Blue and White Dragon Plate

[bokaba]

Dear Members,

I came across this plate at a moving sale yesterday. It is about 10 inches across. It appears to have a Ming Chenghua mark. I think it may be a 19th Century export perhaps or a modern fake. What do you think?

Thank you,

Bokaba

[Stan]

Hi Bokaba, This is Japanese Arita ware, wether a fake or not needs a hands on inspection, the decoration looks good and the scalloped edge on the plate, however the stilt marks are not what you would usually see on a plate of this size, usually the stilts are  are grouped around the center and spaced evenly for firing in the kiln, I can't really make out if these are stilt marks or imperfections in the glaze on the bottom, maybe a better photo of the bottom at an angle might help, if authentic it would be from the Edo period a photo of the bottom foot at an angle could tell us that, the Chenghua mark was used more than any other Chinese marks, it has been said that the use of  the mark was saying that this is the equivalent of Chenghua porcelain.

[bokaba]

Thanks Stan. I will try to get some additional pictures. Here is a similar mark I was able find on the Gothborg site showing the same mis-written "Da" mark with an added stroke. They date around late 18th-early 19th Century.

Under heading: "Arita - Imitating Chinese Ming dynasty Chenghua mark"

www.gotheborg.com/marks/20thcenturyjapan.shtml

[peterp]

Only Japanese plates have sometimes marks using (?), I wonder why they did this. In Japanese it should also be ?. 

[Stan]

It is in one of my books on Chinese marks, doesn't it mean greatest or remotest.

[Stan]

I wonder if the Japanese were trying to say this is greater than the Chenghua period.

[peterp]

> It is in one of my books on Chinese 

While there is the possibility of erroneous writing of characters , this one  is too frequent to be unintentional. This character is beginner's Japanese or Chinese level. Plus, the use of tai (?) in Japanese is completely different compared to Chinese; it is mostly used to mean thick, fat, etc., a meaning that the character does not have in Chinese. In Chinese more often than not it is used as "too" (e.g. too tall, too big, too expensive, too distant). Occasionally it is used as honorific, etc.  - for example Huang-hou means empress, Huang-taihou means empress dowager, the emperor's mother. In daily life there is another example: ?? means wife(!) in Chinese.

Even if there is a character stroke error, but the question is, how did it get into a "Chinese" mark book? May I ask which one?

Any Japanese would see the error. So why did they use it that way? I have been wondering if they intentionally made this to make it clear that it is Japanese and not Chinese porcelain, or if it is hinting at the place where it was made...?

[Stan]

Yes Peter, I am certainly not questioning you, I am just limited to my books, the book that shows the mark is " The new revised handbook of Chinese Ceramics " by Gerald Davison on page 45 the character is #53 This is listed under single character marks, I don't know if that makes a difference or not, but he says it means Tai, Greatest, Remotest (Yuan).

[peterp]

Thanks Stan, I thought it might be his.
That is the only English mark book I know of, but I do not have it. I would be interested in having a look at it once, though. I use Chinese mark books and even the one that is/was most  common in the Chinese world, probably, does not have that many marks. This translation of this character is a bit far-fetched. Those meanings could only be obtained in combination with other characters. The character is virtually never used alone. Like "too" it changes the meaning of the word behind it somewhat. I wonder how good the authors Chinese is.
Anyway, accumulating the number of characters his book seems to contain is no easy matter.

[Stan]

The Author is depending on othes to interpret the chinese marks, so I'am sure your right, who knows why the Japanese wrote their Da with a dot underneath, thanks for the good explanation.