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Of special interest to forum fans with serious interests in Chinese porcelain and pottery, I share the below link to Gerald Davison's newly revamped website, where his latest, expanded and retitled edition of 'Marks on Chinese Ceramics' will commence sales in early 2021. This book recognizes the growing importance and value of post-Qing Republic and early PRC-era porcelains with around 800 new entries for that period, which marks were generously shared by Australian collector and researcher Michaela Russell, from her Watersilkdragon website and other resources. Now's a good time to familiarize yourself with the new Davison site and then keep an eye out for the release date of the book for sale via the site in early 2021.

Best regards,

Bill H.



Link :Davison Handbook of Marks on Chinese Ceramics

Thanks Bill, does one have to know Chinese in order to use the book effectively? Thanks Arun

Arun, The book layout will be in three main sections, two grouped by type of script used to write the marks (standard kaishu script and the seal script zhuanshu) and one featuring symbolic marks. The kaishu mark section begins with Imperial reign marks, then features subgroups ranging from one to nine or more characters, followed by date marks. The zhuanshu section also begins with reign marks, but the remainder are fewer in number, so are laid out simply in order of their increasing number of characters. The last group of date marks is followed by the directory, featuring information about each mark and available details of the potters, studios and history associated with them.

Users who may not read Chinese can learn to look up marks with a bit of practice in character recognition by comparing what they see on their dish with what is contained in the book. To ease this process, the more common four-character marks have been separated into subgroups by whether they are marked as Made for a Hall (Tang zhi 堂製), Made for a Studio (Zhai zhi 齋製) simply contain the character for Hall or Studio, or just end in ‘Made’ Zhi/製 or Zao/造. This process assumes most anyone can memorize the few basic characters shown in these four-character sections, and then apply them to the identification of almost any other mark in the book, starting the search with the mark's first character, usually found at its top right corner. However, zhuanshu marks will be a stretch for some, as they still are for me after dealing with the language for decades. The introduction contains additional explanations and etymological pointers from the author.

Hope this offers positive encouragement.

Bill H.

Thanks Bill. I will definitely keep an eye out for this release. The website you posted says the book costs 60 Pounds, the older versions are available (second hand?) for $1400 from Amazon in US and $400 (1994) from Abebooks.com. Bill, I see from your email address you may be in the US? Thanks for all the tips.

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