Making a Mark: Gerald Davison’s guide to deciphering seemingly impenetrable Chinese marks

Making a Mark

For the collector of Chinese ceramics a knowledge of marks can be the difference between a car boot sale dud and a piece worth thousands, Gerald Davison deciphers the script

Any study of Chinese ceramics will inevitably lead at some point to a curiosity about the written marks that can appear on the base or on the outside of many ceramic objects. The broad term ‘ceramics’ covers everything from lowfired earthenware, higher-fired stoneware and very highfired porcelain.

China has the world’s oldest history of producing ceramics with the first earthenware pottery appearing in China around 20,000 years ago, with true porcelain being created for the first time during the Song dynasty (960-1279) some thousand years ago.

Marks first started to appear during the Tang dynasty which spanned the years 618 to 906.

These diverse marks were applied using the everyday Chinese script in a form of characters known as kaishu and could refer to the purpose of an object, the name of its owner or giver, as well as many very auspicious elements or commendations.

Often the mark would even refer to a location where the object was to be used or kept. Prior to the Tang dynasty the only marks used confirmed the size of objects – sometimes made for measuring quantities of materials such as grain. In rare examples, the mark might also include the date, particularly if the object was being dedicated to a significant event.

REIGN MARKS

Marking ceramics became even more common during the Ming (1368-1644) and Qing (1644-1912) dynasties effectively spanning the 14th to early 20th century.

The most widely known of these were the imperial marks for the reign periods of the various emperors. Each emperor would take a title (not a personal name) by which his reign would be known and these marks were originally intended to identify items made for the imperial household.

Imperial reign marks can appear in either four or six-character form, with ‘period made’ added to the dynasty title and the title of the reign, in the case of the latter. The first two characters refer to the dynasty. Da Ming, ‘Great Ming’ means the piece is from the Ming dynasty (1368- 1644) and Da Qing, ‘Great Qing’ means the piece is from the Qing dynasty (1644-1911). The second two characters refer to the reign title and the third set of two characters read nian zhi, or ‘years or period made’.

Opposite page Dish decorated in wucai colours and (left) its four-character mark zai chuan zhi le or Discovering joy in the river by fish, early 18th century, diameter 20.2cm, all images unless stated courtesy of Sotheby’s

Right Stem cup with copper red fish and (below) its horizontal sixcharacter underglaze blue kaishu mark and period of Yongzheng (17231735)

Below left Brush pot decorated with famillerose enamels and (right) its four-character mark yu yan shu wu or Library for washing inkstones, height 12.4cm

IMPERIAL NEEDS

Clearly, the requirements and demands of the imperial household were enormous and very large quantities of ‘official’ items were produced under royal patronage and supervision in the porcelain producing city of Jingdezhen. Located in Jiangxi province, the city took its name from the Jingde period (1004-1007) in the reign of the emperor Zhenzong of the Song dynasty.

Records show large orders were placed most years for different members of the imperial court, including various family members, officials and concubines and these were frequently identified by a mark relating to their location.

The founder of the Ming Dynasty, the Hongwu Emperor, had 24 sons. By the end of the dynasty almost three centuries later, the imperial clan had grown to exceed 80,000 members illustrating just how substantial their needs became.

During the Qing dynasty (1644-1912), possession of official objects bearing the imperial reign mark by private individuals was prohibited, other than as an imperial gift and records of such gifts were maintained for inspection purposes.

‘If everything else indicates imperial quality, a useful although not infallible check, is that on an authentic imperial item the reign mark was applied so carefully that it usually aligned perfectly with the centre line of the decoration on the body of the object’

Left Tripod censor decorated with famillerose enamels against a yellow ground and (below) its horizontal six-character zhuanshu mark and period of Qianlong (1736-1795), height 38.8cm

Below right Pair of blue and white covered baluster vases marked with an artemisia leaf. Kangxi period (16621722), height 53cm

There is some evidence that private kilns in Jingdezhen and elsewhere also used the official reign mark on commercial ‘popular ware’ so the existence of a correct reign mark for the period made still does not confirm that a particular piece is ‘imperial’ or of an official type made for the court.

If everything else indicates imperial quality, a useful although not infallible check, is that on an authentic imperial item the reign mark was applied so carefully that it usually aligned perfectly with the centre line of the decoration on the body of the object.

IMPERIAL DECREE

During the reign of the Kangxi emperor (1662-1722) an edict was issued in 1667 forbidding the use of his reign mark on porcelain in case it became broken and then discarded.

Although this edict was not always adhered to, it did result in the frequent use of just the empty double circles or a number of symbols of good fortune such as the artemisia leaf (right) being used in place of the imperial reign mark.

As a frequent alternative, the marks of earlier Ming emperors were sometimes used as there was, in any case, little respect for a defeated dynasty, the Ming emperors having been defeated by the Manchu from the north who then went on to form the Qing dynasty.

18TH-CENTURY ZHUANSHU

Later, in the 18th century, there was an artistic revival which entailed the use of a more archaic type of script for marks known as zhuanshu and these square or oblong shapes are often referred to as ‘seal marks’.

All of these marks in both types of script owe their origins to both the pictograms and ideograms which made up China’s earliest form of written language

BUYER BEWARE

This really brings us to the most significant problem with reign marks and that is they are notoriously unreliable – hence the much greater value for an item that clearly displays the correct mark for the period in which it was made. Reign marks should, therefore, be treated at first with circumspection, until all of the other qualities of a piece have been carefully considered.

It should also be remembered many of the patterns and styles for specific designs continued unchanged, in some cases for several centuries, with a succession of genuine reign marks being used. This is why the correct ‘mark and period’ piece is so sought after.

In market value terms, the genuine ‘mark and period’ item will always command a much higher value than an identical object with no mark at all. In the same way the object without a mark will attract a higher value than a similar item with an apocryphal or incorrect mark for the period.

Despite their importance, imperial reign marks represent a very small group of marks and there are many more and larger interesting groups of marks.

One of the largest of these groups falls under the heading of tang or ‘hall’ marks. These are not to be confused with the hallmark system used for English silver, and are often found in four or six character form. They frequently allude to an ancestral hall in which case they may be linked to a family or clan name or the collection of a scholar.

When place marks include the name of an individual, the translation and identification become still more complicated as it was usual for educated Chinese to have more than one name.

Apart from ‘given’ names, used by the immediate family, an ‘alias’ or ‘adopted’ name was common. These pseudonyms would often include a further name or names that were used to reflect the user’s personal interests, philosophy or professional standing.

Such ‘artistic’ names are often found together with the characters ‘hall’ already mentioned, ‘studio’ and ‘house’, along with ‘pavilion’ (xuan), ‘retreat’ (ju), ‘library’ (shuwu) or other similar terms referring to a special place within the home that was probably used for artistic work, contemplation or ritual activity.

These names were usually chosen by their owner but some were bestowed as a reward on high-ranking scholar/officials by the reigning emperor.

FORBIDDEN CITY

When these marks contain the family and given name or the ‘alias’, ‘adopted’ or ‘studio’ name in full, the meaning is generally clear but identification becomes problematic when only part of one of these names is used. Studio names could also be perpetuated by more than one generation, or by the individual potters (which we will come to very soon).

Apart from specific locations, place marks frequently relate to the ultimate destination or ownership of an item and although some may even be a studio name for a particular potter, artist, shop or porcelain factory, they quite often refer to a section of a palace or official department.

Examples of this can be found in the marks Made for the hall of joyful longevity and Made for the palace of eternal spring which are both located within the imperial Forbidden City (Gugong), Beijing. It can be safely assumed that the porcelain carrying these marks was specifically commissioned for eventual use in these precise locations.

Above Pair of bowls decorated with famillerose enamels over a yellow ground and (below) its four- character mark yong qing chang chun or Eternal blessings and youthfulness, diameter 12.7cm, Guangxu period (1875-1908)

Left Wucai decorated garlic mouth vase and (below) its horizonal six-character, underglaze blue, kaishu mark and period of Wanli (1573-1619), height 46.2cm

LOST IN TRANSLATION

However, as with reign marks, some of the classical place marks were repeated in later periods so they are no less fallible as a guide to age. Some descriptions found in place marks have a clear Confucian flavour such as Made for the Hall where Benevolence is Cherished. Others make the most of a pun or rebus, exploiting the monosyllabic nature of the written language and the large number of homophones it contains appealed greatly to the Chinese sense of humour and love of the enigmatic message.

For example the mark chen ding xuan zhi, which literally translation can mean ‘made for the pavilion where the dust settles’. But in Buddhism, the word chen (dust) represents ‘the world’ and ding (immovable) conveys the idea of mental abstraction, so the mark can be interpreted as made for the pavilion of abstraction from mundane affairs’.

One of the great challenges of Chinese ceramics, having been produced over such a long period of time, is determining their authenticity as items were so often reproduced complete with apocryphal reign marks.

So, although the mark alone cannot help with accurate dating, it is nevertheless one of the important clues in determining the origin and purpose of an item. In turn, this can then have a positive effect on its market value.

Gerald Davison is the author of the 2021 reference book Marks on Chinese Ceramics, which includes 4,200 marks in both kaishu and zhuanshu script with both English translations and the romanisation of the Chinese pinyin together with historical notes –the only publication in any language to fully explore this field. It is available at www.chinesemarks.com, priced £65 plus postage.