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Any help appreciated... with identifying the marks on this Japanese vase base. The base appears to be made to fit an earlier Meiji period mixed metal vase. Silver or Silver plated Bronze with Gold detail. Thank You.

The three characters above the square seal appear to be (in Big5 encoding): �Z�ë� (possibly transcribed Bu Zou Ya - 'The Martial Collection Studio/Shop' or as the 'Musashi Studio/Shop', with Musashi being a surname or place name).

The three characters in the seal appear to be from the right: �j���s (possibly transcribed Dai Kan Sei - 'Made by Great Gate' or as 'Oozeki Sei - 'Made by Oozeki', the latter being a surname).

I hope a native speaker of Japanese will come to the rescue and make some sense of the preceding machine translations.

BEst regards,

Bill H.

Bill,

You got it right. The mark (Musahiya) and seal (�zeki sei) refer to the Musashiya company, operated by Ozeki Yahei, 1880-90s.

Guy.

Base look like made for electrified lamp, so likely 1920s-later.

Good luck,
Cal

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