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General information re a Chinese platter

by Louis W. Heaton
(Seattle, WA, USA)

Hello

I bought the following platter on ebay:
www.ebay.com/itm/ANTIQUE-PLATTER-WHITE-IRONSTONE-OVAL-PLATE-CHINESE-PEACEFUL-WRITING-UNMARKED-/160875329652?_trksid=p2047675.l2557&ssPageName=STRK:MEWNX:IT&nma=true&si=bgBJVj3b7nqJ1%2FkE1krf17lymAg%3D&orig_cvip=true&rt=nc

Copy and paste may be necessary. The mouse over close up gives a pretty clear indication of the style of the Han zi. I will also attach a couple of photos I have taken.

Unfortunately it arrived broken in the mail. I am interested in finding out it's approximate age and value vs cost to restore - a preliminary estimate I got was $500-600.

Of course if a similar platter may be found on the market - that would be another option.

It seems pretty unique to me since I have not seen anything similar.

Thank you for any help.

I am located in the Seattle area and would be able to take the pieces to someone who may be able to provide an accurate assessment. Any suggestions would be welcome.

Louis W. Heaton

Comments for General information re a Chinese platter

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Answer to Peter
by: Louis

Thank you very much for your comments. I can see a couple of characters where it appears that traditional 'fire' strokes have been replaced with a horizontal stroke -- modern style.

Closer look does seem like the characters have been traced over dimmer characters and then possibly re-fired.

Anyway I doubted that it was an antique but needed another opinion. It was unique enough that it was worth it to me to buy.

The center support on the bottom also made me suspicious.

Thanks again.
to Snap
by: peter

Hi, the bottom is visible at the Ebay link given in the post.
Broken plate
by: Snap

This looks like quite a modern piece, but without a view of underside it is hard to say much.

The Seattle Museum of Art has quite a good Chinese ceramic collection. A telephone call to the curatorial staff might yield someone willing to take a look at your item. They have a website with contact information.
Chinese platter
by: peter

Hello,
I'm afraid we can't discuss values here for the reasons mentioned under "Value of Antiques" (see left menu).
This said, is the amount you mention the restoration cost? I think it is quite stiff for such an item. You could try the appraiser's association in your area to recommend someone specialized on Chinese porcelain, if you want to know more about the item.
Personally I would not restore this...there are too many doubts present for me to doubt its authenticity? It could be that it is not even antique.
Whether the character style is right is difficult to tell, depends when it was made. In the Qing dynasty the style would probably not be appropriate because a different, older style was used then. This is a modern writing style.
There are characters in the text that look like current simplified characters (used in China since about the 1960s), but sometimes it is difficult to tell if the specific simplified or abbreviated character form(s) did exist in earlier times too (some did, others were newly created and only used from the 60s onward). In porcelain made in recent times in China we occasionally find such characters among traditional characters because they inadvertently used some simplified characters when copying text.

There is no doubt that the writer is/was good at Chinese calligraphy, but many characters show that they were re-drawn over the original strokes. Calligraphers don't do that usually. Also, the reflection of some characters in the picture (one of the two showing the writing) give the impression as if there is writing on top of the glaze? Is that so? If yes, this is very likely a modern product. Blue writing is usually under the glaze in antiques.

I have doubts about the foot too. I have never seen an antique porcelain plate from China with a center support like the one shown on the website. Further, the glaze in general gives a relative new appearance, although admittedly the lighting could be the cause - a hands-on inspection would be better to make sure. .

As I said, in my view there are just too many questions as to whether this is a genuine antique.

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