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Hello!

I'm about to purchase these two vases, and i'm hoping someone can help read these marks.

I've attempted to do some image-matching with a couple seal script fonts and spent days researching. But i believe they vary considerably because it is a stylized and artistic way of writing. Plus, i know very few traditional Chinese characters to compare to!

thank you for any pointers.
-Ethan

first one reads Jingdezhen zhi, made in Jingdezhen. the second one is upside down and reads Zhong yi tao zao, something like made by China Art Ceramics, probably an abbreviation for zhongguo yishu tao something.

Mikeoz is correct, I was misreading the last character upside down. it's hard enough reading them right side up!

The upper one is quite simple - Jing De Zhen zhi - made in JingDeZhen. Your problem may have been caused by the ink on the rubber stamp joining lines that don't join. ���w���s

The second is more difficult because of the way the characters have been stylised. Also, the mark is upside down.

It reads Zhong Yi Tao Ci �������� China Artistry Ceramics.

Code: Big 5

Thank you so much. I imagine it takes a lot of experience to interpret these.

The Jingdezhen piece is probably pretty new. But i wasn't able to find anything about "China Artistry Ceramics", "Chinese Arts and Crafts Ceramics", etc... Im sure there are thousands of studios (and "studios"), not all of them searchable on the internet.

Does anyone think its possible to create a system on a computer to read seal script writing (OCR of a sort)? Or will i keep having to bother people here!

Ethan,

I'm afraid that you will just have to keep asking - unless you are prepared to spend many years studying, and many dollars on a raft of dictionaries, and books of seal impression collections.

The problem is that unlike the Roman letter forms (or even Cyrillic or Greek) Chinese seal script has so very many possible variants, a situation exacerbated by the artistic experiments of seal carvers and calligraphers over the last two millennia. Further complicated by the fact that prior to the consolidation of the 'small seal script' around the beginning of the common era, each state and language group in what became China as we know it, had their own script. And seal carvers like to sometimes use these forms to show how clever they are.

However, if you don't mind being seen as eccentric (if not slightly crazy) the study of seals and seal script can be a lot of fun.

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