Topic: Huge Japanese vase heavily etched and marked with characters and Seal

[ardy]

A friend of mine has just bought this and asked me if anyone knows anything about it. It is of 1st class quality and the acid etching and character cuts are excellent. It is 15mm (5/8") thick which I assume is hard to do. 360mm (14")high and 130mm (5") wide and weighs well over 5kgs.

Any thoughts or knowledge of this piece would be appreciated greatly by my friend.

[DeanK]

Hello ardy,

I'm certainly not an expert in regards to Asian glass but your friends vase (quite spectacular by the way) looks more to me like Chinese than Japanese.  I suggest this due to the thickness of the glass and the fretwork decor of the top of the neck.  Cranes, of course, are common to both Chinese and Japanese art (symbolizing prosperity and long life or longevity, at least in Chinese art...not sure with Japanese).  I don't read either written language, so I'll be quite embarrassed if the carved writing turns out to be Japanese instead but I thought I would suggest that you also look into Chinese as a possibility if you haven't already or if you definitively know already that it is indeed Japanese.  Another guess would be that that the characters could be a poem and the chop (or rectangular cartouche shape) could be the artist chop mark but just a guess as I say.

Beautiful whichever it turns out to be and possibly quite valuable.

One question, does the vase show much wear to the bottom?  The color appears to be a very rich emerald green...correct?

regards,

deank

[ardy]

Thanks Dean you could be right but I just thought the characters looked Japanese. Will double check.

The colour is indeed emerald green and it has a polished base which shows a small amount of wear. The characters still have some of the gold that was inlaid in them and the scene shows small amounts of colour.

As a WAG I would say 50's or 60's. The characters may indeed be a poem or a thank you as the person he bought it from said it was a farewell gift for a person leaving.

The chop (cartouche) is the key to this piece but who the hell would know this stuff?

regards

[DeanK]

Hi again,

Yes, the characters looked very Japanese to me, also, but the form, thickness of the glass and that fretwork design reminded me so much of Chinese glass.  Perhaps nineteenth century, but if you say there is minimal wear to the base that does not bode well for the age of the piece.

re: "The chop (cartouche) is the key to this piece but who the hell would know this stuff?"

Well, that's been my problem over the years whenever I have had to deal with an Asian piece of pottery, glass etc.  Finding someone to read the inscriptions can be very difficult unless you have access to a native speaking person of the language involved or a scholar in that field.  I wish I could be more helpful for you and your friend but I noticed your query wasn't getting any responses and thought I would throw the wrench in that the piece might be Chinese instead.  Just didn't want you to overlook that as a possibility and go down a blind alley investigating the piece if that suggestion could help.

good luck with your search,

deank

[Ming]

Hi Ardy

First the wordings on your glass is Chinese. It is a birthday present from a student to his master/teacher. I have no idea how old it is but l do know the writing is what we called traditional Chinese where it is commonly used in Hong Kong and Taiwan but not in mainland China. But it was also used in whole of China before the communist took over the country (before the 40s).
In fact China now use a simplified Chinese. Look at this way if somebody dig up a very old Chinese antique(may be a thousand year or so old). l could read all the writings on it but not somebody from China just because we use same Chinese writing in Hong Kong.

[ardy]

Thank you very much ming. I spent an hour looking at character sets and convinced myself it was Kanji.

Can you translate the characters?

regards

Ardy

[Ming]

Believe me it is Chinese. Very typical formal Chinese birthday wording. If you want a sort of translation then l have a go.
The main line first two words is the name of the person(not Surname in this case) ,third and fourth word are "teacher" ,fifth and sixth words are Chinese birthday, seventh and eighth words are "celebration".
Lower line are the name of the person given the present"Could be Mr. or Miss. Tong" this name can be use for man or woman. Some names are unisex.
The seal is also Chinese  as the third word on the right is "Tong" and a lot of companies and manufacturers use name such as XX XX Tong .

[ardy]

Thank you very much Ming this will help Chris a lot in trying to  ID this one.

regards

[malwodyn]

I can confirm what Ming has said about the characters - Kanji is the term for Chinese characters used for writing Japanese.  I spent some time last night identifying the words from my Japanese-English character dictionaries, and had intended to post a rough translation, but cannot add anything much to what Ming has already said, except that Chinese as now written on the mainland uses many simplified forms of the characters, while Taiwan and to some extent Japan still use the traditional forms.  Also it should be noted that the groups of characters do not form Japanese words - or at least, not words in any of my dictionaries!

[ardy]

Thanks malwodyn, I spent an hour the other day looking at large charts of characters and that is where I came to 2 characters in Kanji that made me think it was Japanese.

Thanks to Ming we can be certain that it has come from Hong Kong or Taiwan. Many Australians work in Hong Kong rather than Taiwan so I suspect that HK is the more likely. Not sure if traditional chinese is written in Singapore as even more Aussies work there.