Rectangular porcelain box?

[heavenguy]

Hello, I also found this today the I never seen before. In my opinion it looks Japanese but I don't know what this is.

Looks old and in really rough shape. The top looks like the Chinese Jardinare chairs but I don't think it's chinese. Especially because of the dark green color on the decoration.

any help will be of much appreciate it.

[heavenguy]

more pics

[heavenguy]

foot rim.

[Stan]

Sorry I can't help with the name but it is Japanese, and looks old, 1st half of the 20th century.

[peterp]

I have seen a number of these. This is Chinese. Most likely it is only vintage. At least, such items probably were still used a number of decades ago. I do not know if this also exists in Japan, but I doubt it, because Japanese kanpoyaku (Chinese medicine) and acupuncture may possibly not make use of pulse feeling.

In my view this is a Chinese wrist pad for feeling pulse. Nowadays they are soft and made of leather, etc.. The wrist is put with the back down on it, so that that Chinese doctor can feel the pulse of the patient.
The characters on the side are no mark, just a verse as decoration. The pad leis flat when used.
Here is an image link that shows a couple of them.  The other items may be pillows and recently made. Just ignore those.
tinyurl.com/ju9q5vj

[heavenguy]

Watching Chinese period movies, I always wonder myself if they could actually detect illness by feeling the pulse. What I found more amazing is that they could know if a women was pregnant just by feeling the pulse.

Thank you very much for informing me about this one. Now I know. Kudos!!!

[Stan]

Thanks Peter, I was going by the mark, it looked Japanese to me.

[Stan]

I usually see this mark, the first character in Japanese marked porcelain, I believe it means Made, although I can't recall ever seeing it from right to left on Japanese items, the marks I see on Japanese is written from top down, but I can't recall ever seeing this mark "made" in Chinese, does this mark, the first character mean made in Chinese? usually it will say in English " made in China".

[Hmm]

Hmm... Which character do you think says "made"?

I'm not sure what the all the characters are but it looks like...

"?????

The other one looks like
"????"

Are we sure this isn't a pillow?

[Stan]

Hi Hmm, the first character on the right side.

[Stan]

I guess that the first character in Chinese according to my book on chinese marks is Shan (family name).

[Hmm]

Yeah.  Pretty sure that's definitely shan for mountain. 

The third character from the right is actually probably ? not ?. 

Still no clue what the second character could be...

[Hmm]

[admin] link removed - please do not post links to commercial sites (see 'external links', above)


so the character is ????.  Not ? but ?.

Also it says ????.  Now I can kind of see the shui character, although it still looks poorly written.

According to the description it looks like the "pillow" in the link dates back to the late Qing. 

[peterp]

Yes, they say
????
????
but still no pillow. The shape and size of these are not suitable for use as pillow.
Just two common verses added as decoration.

(The first one might hint to a poem by a Song dynasty poet or scholar, the second means just that nature is pleasant for people.)

[Stan]

Thanks Peter.