Imari Cup Wanli Mark

[kardinalisimo]

20th century, first half?
By the way any idea of the depicted plants/fruit. One looks like pomegranate but not sure of the other ones.
Thanks

[Stan]

I think your right on, 1st half of the 20th century, pomegranates, and usually peaches but the other looks like cherries.

[peterp]

The second is probably a "buddha hand" fruit. However, I have never seen this or the oddly shaped Chinese peaches in Japan. Not sure if the first image (the right fruit resembling a Chinese peach in shape, while the left one looks more like a loquat), or the one inside shows loquats. The latter are found in Japan.

I would like to draw your attention to the first character of the mark. The character shown is ? while it should be ?. I do not know why many Japanese porcelains using Chinese marks are using this character. It is the wrong one, and they should know. Anyway, this is one of the means to differentiate Japanese made porcelain imitating Chinese porcelain. But not all such marks use the wrong character.

[Stan]

Your right Peter, the Great mark, I never paid much attention to it before, I thought it was just drawn sloppy but looking a some of my plates with a six Character Chenghua mark, the Great character has a dot instead of a line, thanks for pointing that out.

[kardinalisimo]

Thanks Peter. I always struggle with recognizing some of the plants and fruits on Chinese and Japanese porcelain. Good to know about the ? character.

[Stan]

Does that mark mean "great, remotest.".

[peterp]

Stan, in Japanese its meaning is completely different from Chinese.