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Subject:Re: Dragon Saucer Dish 4 Character Kangxi underglaze blue mark
Posted By: Bill H Tue, Mar 01, 2016
Tony Allen's latest book, "Allen's Antique Chinese Porcelain - The Detection of Fakes", states on page 77 that "Kangxi (1662-1722) reign marks of the period are in kaishu script in underglaze blue, almost never in either zhuanshu seal script, iron red marks or of four characters."
Tony's "almost never" recognizes the presence of an exception for virtually every rule when it comes to Chinese porcelain. One of my catalogs from the Taipei National Palace Museum shows two examples of imperial porcelain with four-character red marks of "Kangxi Yu Zhi" (康熙御製), "Made by Imperial Order, Kangxi Reign".
The Shanghai-published "General Dictionary of Markings on Chinese Historical Porcelains" (中国历代陶瓷款识大典 - Zhongguo lidai taoci kuanzhi dadian), shows several of this type of imperial kiln mark in both red and blue, some of the red ones from the same Taipei catalog cited above. Under the heading of "popular" (minyao) kiln marks, it also shows seven examples of what is indicated to be period marks of "Kangxi Nian Zhi" (康熙年製), "Made during the Kangxi Reign", some found on shards. This book is in Chinese, and since I've never tried to translate the whole thing, I have no appreciation of what kind of scholarship is behind these findings. However, for those of us who are not archaeologists at Jingdezhen, I would caution that the chance of ever owning a period piece of porcelain with the "Kangxi Nian Zhi" mark probably ranks right up there with the odds of finding the Holy Grail while planting a window-box garden to brighten your 20th floor flat.
Best regards,
Bill H.
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