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
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.
I didn't know the character before "alcohol" means Tobacco and in Taiwan they write traditional Chinese
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.
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.
I don't know how to send Chinese characters on the internet but in HK, we use the chqracter "smoke" to mean tobacco