Page 461 - Chinese Porcelain Vol I, Galland

MARKS. 247

the second at the of the second column, followed
sign being top
by the word nien, or period, and finally chi (made). Sometimes
the first two signs giving the name of the dynasty are omitted,
when the mark is reduced to four signs, arranged in two
columns ; of these the first two are the nien-hao, and the second
two the formula nien chi (period made). In cases where the
date is which is sometimes done when
printed horizontally,
the date is on a collar or band, on the face of the
put piece,
it has to be deciphered from the reader's right hand towards
the left No.
(see 397).
these date-marks have been so and
Unfortunately, forged
imitated on modern pieces that they cannot alone be ac-
cepted as proof of age ; in fact, there is every reason to
fear that the European traders used to order the porcelain
of the intended
to be made with certain marks, regardless
decoration, which often was not of the style of the period so
indicated.
The most favourite mark seems to have been " Ching-hwa '
under which immense of china to
(1465-1488), quantities appear
have been made and to the seventeenth
shipped Europe during
and centuries. In 1648 the Dutch Haarlem
eighteenth ship
foundered in Table South Africa, and in 1763 another
Bay,
Dutch the
ship, Jung Thomas, of Amsterdam, was wrecked at
the same From time to time of china bearing
place. pieces
the Ching-hwa mark have beeu recovered from these wrecks,
some of which may be seen in the Leinster House Museum,
Dublin. In 1885 the wreck of the latter ship was removed,
when further of Chinese were recovered,
specimens porcelain
the nest of small blue and white now to be seen
including cups
in the Edinburgh Museum, encrusted together into what has
become a lump of sandstone. These also bear the Ching-hwa
mark like the Dublin pieces, in four characters, the " Great
"
Ming being omitted.
Ching-hwa reigned for twenty-three years, and it is not
in that all the china could have been made that
likely, period,
lias been sold under the mark during the last four hundred
years ; nor is it probable that two to three hundred years after
that reign enough of it could have remained to regularly form
of the of the Dutch ships. Why this mark was
part cargoes
in such favour with Europeans it is difficult to say, as the