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I wonder if someone can identify the mark and tell me about the figuire.

Plastic Ressin

What makes you say that?

Can someone let me know what the mark is on this peice as well as a Date of when you think it was made? Thanks so much

I am not very adept when it comes to these archaic-style characters, but it may be that the mark reads from left to right in Mandarin as 'Xian Yang' (��䁑 - Chinese Big5 encoding), which might be translated as 'Last Morning' or 'Previous Sunrise'.

Your photos don't lend themselves to a conclusive evaluation of authenticity or the material of your carving. The general appearance more or less resembles the kind of deity (a Daoist Star God perhaps) that would have been available from ivory carving shops in Both Hong Kong and Taipei during the third quarter of the 20th century, before the UN CITES treaty forced carvers to switch from endangered elephant ivory to fossil ivory from prehistoric mammoth tusks. The latter is recognizable by having quite a lot of natural cracking. Your piece seems to have been plugged on the base to hide the tusk cavity, something that would not necessarily be done with a plastic ornaments, which usually are solid throughout.

Best regards,

Bill H.

bill how about a reading of "guangming", left to right?

Hey Rat, how about if we compromise on 'Da Ming' (Great Ming Dynasty). Actually I found an example where the same style characters were used that way in a Xuande six-character porcelain mark in the zhuanshu section of the Davison book.

Frank, just keep in mind there's no way you have a piece of Ming ivory.

Cheers,

Bill H.

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