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Can someone please translate this tiny plaque on the bottom of a small cloisonne box I have.

Thanks in advance for your help.

Tom

古藝齋藏 (traditional Chinese)
古艺斋藏 (simplified Chinese)

From right to left, top to bottom, the four character of the collector's
mark (not maker's mark) are:

Gu Yi Zhai Zang

Gu - Old, antique;
Yi - arts;
Zhai - study, studio, room, building;
Zang - storage, collection.

Gu Yi Zhai 古艺斋 is possibly a room or a study (inside a house) or a building
named by its owner for a storage place for his antiques.

Zang - means collection.

The whole term can be loosely translated as:

"The Collection of Gu Yi Zhai"

or

"The Collection of the Antique Arts Study (room)"

Incidentally, there is a street block called 琉璃厂 Liu Li Chang, in BeiJing,
where a lot of OLD Chinese shops were located. Many of these shops sell
antiques, antique books, etc and had been there for a long time. There
is one called 古艺斋 Gu Yi Zhai but it was supposed to be a shop that sells
musical instruments. I cannot say for sure if the mark on your cloisonne
piece has anything to do with this old BeiJing shop or not.

I could only find one cloisonne piece with the similar "Mark" but I was
unable to open the link to find more info.

A paid professional appraiser may be able to find out more about your piece.

Bill



http://www.86gudong.com/Article.asp?BClassID=20&ArtID=4166

http://www.likefar.com/scenedetail.cfm/argu/cid,16-id,803

small correction: the last character "collection of/collected by" is represented as "cang" rather than "zang".

unfortunately Liulichang is not even a shadow of its former self. the best thing to do there is to make use of the bookstores, which are among the best sources of books on Chinese art in China.

Thanks for the replies. It doesn't look antique to me, so I'm still curious about it.

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