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any help would be greatly appreciated, i have this cinnabar plate, it has mark on the back, do you know what does it say, or how much value has this plate?

Please be very careful handling this item.
Cinnabar is mercuric sulfide. If this actually
is made from cinnabar it is very likely to
contain mercury.

The mark is a Qianlong six charecter mark, and if your plate is also of the period, it is quite valuable. I would say at least $10,000 - possibly much more.

The archaistic design of the center was much favored by emperor Qianlong, and this makes me believe that your plate could be of the period.

Around that there are bats -a symbol of happiness, and then the Eight Auspicious Symbols of Buddhism. In my opinion this is also correct for the Qianlong period decorations.

If you could provide some better photographs, it would be a great help, because it's difficult to see the details on the pictures here.

It would also be good to know the dimensions of your plate.

I have to say I'm not an Expert in this area and others might disagree with me.

The mark says Qianlong, but this is a modern fake made from molded plastic covered in lacquer paint.
The original piece is in the National Palace Museum in Teipei. Many dozens of orignal carved lacquer pieces were molded and mass-copied in the 1970's - and literally thousands of copies of this plate are in circulation.

Cheers

Doug

thanks for your input, are you totaly sure that it is fake? and if it is fake doesn't still have some value? our friend Corey just before you commented that it might be authentic.

Yes, 100% certain it is a fake.

I've been studying and collecting Chinese carved lacquer for well over 10 years, and have looked at every "cinnabar" piece offered for sale on eBay and Liveauctioneers since 2004. I've seen copies like this offered as authentic dozens of times.

In 1972 the National Palace Museum in Taipei had a major exhibition of carved lacquer. The exhibition featured 50 priceless Imperial examples. Molds were made from all 50 original pieces, and highly accurate copies were cast and sold as souvenirs of the exhibition in the museumgift shop - along with a companion book called "Masterpices of Chinese Carved Lacquer Ware in the National Palace Museum". Each of these accurate copies had an impressed circular mark on the bottom saying that it was from the National Palace Museum collection.

Scammers acquired some of these accurate copies, filled in the impressed museum mark, and made more molds from these copies. They used these second state molds to create copies without any museum markings. They then cover these in red and black lacquer paint, and fill in any molded reign marks with gold paint.


The original Imperial piece is priceless - worth manyy hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars. What is the chance you found it's long lost original companion? ZERO.

The only value your copy has is for scammers that want to sell it as genuine and rip off some unsuspecting person.


Here is a photo of the original, and photos of copies sold by uncrupulous auction houses to unsuspecting dupes.

Cheers

Doug

Doug thanks for your great input. lately i'm interested very much in cinnabar lacquer and i found these, the seller assures me that they are more than a century old. i still did not buy them, i will take your advice 1st. he wants 1000 euro for the pair.

they are 25cm

Hi! How about this one I found at an Estate Sale (ending this weekend)??

I commented that the decoration style seemed correct for the Qianlong period (as opposed to a later work with apocryphal mark), but I assumed the plate was real old lacquerware. It was only pure luck there was another forum member who knew this was a plastic copy of an imperial piece.

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