A Blue and White "Floral" Bottle Vase - Qianlong Mark

[Charles]

My gut is telling me that this one is a fake. The shape seems right. I can't tell if the mark is handwritten, but the characters are correct. However, something about the colour of the cobalt blue and the decorations don't seem right to me, especially around the neck/stem of the vase and the flower decorations. I thought the cobalt blue used during the Qianlong era was native to China so shouldn't the blue have a grey-ish tinge due to its maganese content vs. imported blue from Persia and Sumatra? The foot looks very thick as well. Wanted to share and discuss it anyway just to have you guys point out its faults so that I can learn what to watch out for. Thank you!

[Charles]

More photos.

[Charles]

More photos.

[peterp]

The shape is that of a "Shangping", but I do not know how that is called in any other language. Common from the Qianlong era, as far as I know.
You are right about the blue color, but we do not need to look that far.
The brown foot rim was artificially made to look dark, a practice frequently found with fakes. It often is impossible to clean it off, so it is not dirt proper.
Apart from that, the mark looks like a printer font... I assume you know what that means.

[Stan]

Hi Peter, I have never heard that term before " Printer Font" is that a computer generated mark ?

[peterp]

May I refer you to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Font ?

We use "font" normally to describe the style or type of letters displayed in digital format, but it originated in traditional typography, I think.
With "printer" font I meant a type of character that is used for printing by computer or otherwise.

[Stan]

Thanks Peter, thanks for that information about fonts, most of the new porcelain coming out of china being sold as new is printed, under a 10 times loop you can see all the dots making up the decoration, not like old transfer method or the copper plate method.

[Stan]

The mark on this vase is to small to tell if it is hand painted or printed, a larger photo of the mark would tell , but all the coloring on the mark seems to be the same color, and I know if that is true then it is printed.

[peterp]

You won't find the intermittent breaks or other telltale signs of transfer printing. This is whole mark that looks a bit too perfect. Proportions and all are showing no signs of hand drawing, as they invariably do even with imperial ware.
You can further enlarge the bottom picture. The mark is big enough, just shown at an angle.

[Stan]

Yes Peter, I see what you mean, thanks.