Ancient Porttery Industry

The ancient Japanese pottery industry was in many ways smaller in scale compared with the Chinese. Marks was also applied for different reasons than in china. Personal signatures of the artists involved are very common. We also found a different attitude toward what the marks are placed on Japanese porcelain, and in particular, export porcelain from the 19th century and beyond. The full range of imperial reign marks so common in china, true or false, there is almost never. Brands are more commercially oriented, more numerous and can vary even within a set of parts. It may indicate the name of the factory, the potter, the decorator, the employer, the client, the exporter, importer, or both, or part of them or maybe just say "Made in Japan", "Japan" " Nippon "" Happiness "or" good luck "in any number of ways. The increase in confusion are the hundreds of porcelain decoration companies active in the early to mid 20th century at the same time putting many different brands in the same good, seemingly random, but probably for some reason. To give just one example, the company Noritake has been active for only about a hundred years, is believed to have used more than 400 different brands.