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Hi all

I've got these ornaments that I cannot identify its origin and would be grateful if someone knows about it. The seal that looks simple belongs to another cat ornament, but do not know what it means.

Thanks

The second photo shows an upside-down, mirror-image six-character apocryphal seal-script mark of "Made during the Qianlong Reign of the Great Qing Dynasty". I'm unsure what the two characters represent in the equally upside-down third image. Perhaps a factory name? Its seal-script characters look a bit like "Zhi Ming" (治明), or "Govern Brightly". I couldn't find any record of it as a porcelain mark, either online or in Gerald Davison's latest edition of "The New & Revised Handbook of Marks on Chinese Ceramics".

Your figurine of a cat is clothed in polychrome "tobacco leaf" decoration, which motif would be more at home on a dish than an ornament. The piece probably was produced at one of the factories that specialized in ornamenting Chinese porcelain blanks during the late 20th century colonial period in Hong Kong and Macao, which workshops are more widespread nowadays in both China and Southeast Asia.

I'd rate the odds of someone flipping the decal for the Qianlong mark to its mirror-image position to be somewhat greater in a shop outside of China. In any event, your ornament appears to be no older than circa the third quarter, 20th century, and possibly made more recently.

Best regards,

Bill H.

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