Guangxu

[peterp]

Please also note that I do not know where the rice grain pattern porcelain was made, or whether it was made in more than one place. Not necessarily in Jingdezhen. Actually, the style of the underglaze blue decoration might as well be from Liling kiln, which is nowadays one of the big kilns.
What I said about the grit and foot rim shapes is almost exclusively referring to Jingdezhen, as most everything that we talk about. Jingdezhen was the mainstream production area in the Qing dynasty, but Dehua was another large kiln and Canton wares were made exclusively for export. Other, minor southern kilns may have different conditions, but the foot rim looks as if it was originally fired at a JDZ kiln.

(Note) Just had a look at my items from Canton and Jingdhezhen and none of the 18th century Jingdezhen export plates had any grit (!), but all but the best of those from Canton had some grit in a position like yours, but less prominent, or a rough foot rim, both indicative of firing (quality) conditions differing from Jingdezhen. I'm afraid I never paid much attention to this.

[peterp]

I would like to comment on your other plates. This is my personal view and is the result of experience made here in the Far East.

The top plate (famille rose) is not from Jingdezhen. That is Canton enamel ware. It corresponds to wares as shown by the Guangzhou museum.
It is the first time I see a Kangxi mark, or any mark, on a Canton enamel plate.

Second plate from top (not export ware):
Not sure about this looking at these pictures. I have doubts about its authenticy. The decoration is a common late Qing, Guangxu decoration, but the blue mark is not written in regular Guangxu writing style.  Additionally, the character 'xu' of 'Guangxu' is written 绪, which is used in simplified Chinese, but it should be 緒, which is the traditional Chinese used in that period.
It looks also as if there is a worm-back foot rim, which would be found mostly on imperial ware, which would require a very neat round and smooth surface, top quality, and a different mark character style.

Third plate (not export ware):
From the picture of the bottom it looks as if the mark is off-center. Is it or does it only in the picture look that way? Questions remain in my view.

Fourth plate (not export ware):
This is probably among one of the best conditions in late Qing fencai porcelain I have seen, if it is late Qing. This should probably be from Jingdezhen and fencai. Again, the foot rim and mark position leave questions, but maybe it is all right.

And what concerns the kiln grit, am I right if I think the BW plates do not have the same grit as the the top one? And the plate may just be rough or something like sand is adhering? On the foot rim itself, not on the side, embedded inside the glaze?

Anyway, I would suggest to be careful, Jingdezhen imitations are getting better and better and will increase in future, as China has stopped exports of antiques. Sometimes it takes as little as a different character stroke or color hue to detect that an item is not of the period. We have to keep learning.

[peterp]

This is a good example of the proper writing style and character strokes for this mark.


Note:
Just to clarify for non-Chinese speakers what I wanted to point out regarding the 糹part of that xu character. While this abbreviated stroke part written as 纟may be found occasionally in handwritten texts, it was used as the basic and proper way of writing only from about the 1960s onward, when China introduced simplified character writing. It is not the proper way in marks of the Guangxu reign. This is in addition to the difference in mark writing style...not sure whether it means that the mark is not of the period, in this case.

[JjGhandi]

Hi Peter,


I need to correct myself. It seems that kiln grit in the Guangxu period mostly (if not only) appears on Canton wares. I'll post a few examples.
These are all Guangxu century made pieces, no 18th century blanks redecorated.
For me it is still clear (and a known fzct): kiln grit appears either pre-Qing or during the Guangxu period.


Kind regards,

[JjGhandi]

The 200mb restriction is quite hard to work with so I uploaded the here:

ibb.co/mBYWmmV
ibb.co/9YtXxmN
ibb.co/7KZ5JZk
ibb.co/xm1CXj3
ibb.co/MBkQqW5
ibb.co/r5Ss19f

Kind regards,

JJ

[peterp]

That is what I found too after viewing the Canton wares here; only few have no kiln grit at all.
So, it may really be due to the kiln environment during the second firing at the Guangzhou kiln.
The foot rim is also of the 18th century variety.

BTW, from the little bit of decoration visible of the item at ibb.co/xm1CXj3 ... I would suggest you inspect that further. While Canton enamels of this type have black outlines that were possibly transfer printed before painting the rest, the lines on this item are not thin and look as if they might be from a different period. They seem printed with the colors then filled in manually by brush.

[konniela]

1. Try to resume for the rice grain plate: The plate may be fired in early 19 century and first decorated blue/white. Later (may be in late Qing) further decorated with colours for export. In comparison to other plates with such a foot rim, this plate here seems to be thicker and heavier. May be, this is not a good sign.

2.My examples for kiln grit seems to be not right, exept the famille rose plate. The other seems to have only sand on the foot rim. I would like to come back to them, but in a new topic. 

[peterp]

Not sure if thickness is a factor for evaluation here. There isn't really that much rice grain pattern antiques around, especially of that age and size. New 20th century (and probably later) production of this type of porcelain is ongoing and we see modern ones all the time, mainly as tea wares, that is cups and dishes, but not larger pieces. And the mark was added later as it would make no sense to put a BW item with a red on-glaze mark. Blue marks are usually also underglaze blue, meaning that the plate would have had the mark at the same time painted and fired as the underglaze blue decoration.

Thanks also to Konniela and JjGhandhi for drawing my attention to the kiln sand problem. I think I will write a short article about its appearance on fakes and authentic antiques.