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I recently acquired this beautiful Porcelain vase 8" tall x 4" wide with gold gilding / butterflies and 2 women together on 2 sides. Hand-painted and I think Japanese but would appreciate any dating for this vase. Maybe it's made for export in the 1900's with these markings?

This transfer-decorated vase has a mark of "Guangdong Porcelain" (Guangdong Taoci - 廣東陶瓷) in standard characters (I have no idea what the rest means). The website gotheborg.com shows a couple of transfer-decorated items with the mark "Guangdong Porcelain Factory" (Guangdong Cichang - 廣東瓷廠), and estimates they may date to the 1960s-70s and possibly were made in Hongkong.

Hong Kong origins for what that website shows sounds reasonable to me, because a vase from China proper would have had a mark in simplified characters by the 60s or 70s. But considering how a number of Chinese factories involved in transfer-decorated porcelain had moved to Hong Kong, trying unsuccessfully to escape civil and world war on the Mainland after 1936, it may be that your vase is an earlier product of the former colony, perhaps dating from the mid-40s to early 50s.

Best regards,

Bill H.

Thank you for your very informative writing. I really appreciate the help you have provided me. I have never heard of "transfer-decorated" so now I can read more about the process. I did notice how the coloring is like an overlay and not placed perfectly in the lines of the art.

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