Taiwan China vase

[Katelyn888]

Can anyone help with identifying this mark? I have visited "Watersilk..." Since the period is most likely late 1930's - early 1940's. but my hours of research has now halted....I was able to possibly translate 2 of the characters, but still just can't make sense of it. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Karen

[peterp]

It says "Public Sales Office for Tobacco and Liquor"; the sale of these (at least the local produced ones) was a monopoly of the state.
This is simply a liquor bottle made of porcelain. Not very old probably.

[shelley Kong]

I didn't know the character before "alcohol" means Tobacco and in Taiwan they write traditional Chinese

[Stan]

Old liquor bottles here in the U.S are very collectable, I do not know anything about Taiwan's porcelain, but if it were a bottle here it would be worth a lot of money, food for thought.

[peterp]

Not sure what you mean Shelley...how is it written in HK?
Here ?? is the tobacco plant, ?? is smoking, and ?? means cigarette. As Taiwan itself is/was growing tobacco, I am pretty sure this is a commonly used term here.

[shelley Kong]

I don't know how to send Chinese characters on the internet but in HK, we use the chqracter "smoke"  to mean tobacco