Hi, "Another Period..."
Thanks for the image of the base of the weight. Looks like an ok Murano (AVEM probably) to me.
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Leni, to answer your very good questions fully would take quite some time, but briefly my views are as follows. [The images are all 400 pixel wide but less than 6kb - quality is reduced but should still be ok for this discussion.]
a) "Smooth" = "shiny smooth"
b) I have a small selection of Murano weights and they all have a smooth polished base, as shown here:
http://tinypic.com/1torioI cannot say for sure that *all* Murano weights wil be finished in this way. It is definitely true that at least some 19th century Venetian weights have a "matte ground" base (I have an example) and perhaps some 20th century Murano pieces will also have some grinding.
c) For Chinese versus Murano, yes "smoothly polished" would suggest Murano and would often - or usually - suggest not Chinese. But some of the latest Chinese output is getting much better and I would not be surprised to see smooth and neatly finished bases on some of their items.
For a fairly typical Chinese base finish take a look at:
http://tinypic.com/1torhe(This weight has two Green Frogs with Red Eyes and Two Orange-and-Black Bees around the Flower. See comments in another thread about these features.)
Note that the whole base has a "matte ground" finish. Also, looking closely will show that the base is usually not a true circle and often has "indents" around the edge (probably tooling impressions). As with this example shown, there is also often a small "pit" in the base where the grinding has not taken off all of the pontil mark.
d) While I was at it, I took a shot of the base of my one and only example of a "Tutti Frutti" vase (a small one):
http://tinypic.com/1torjaThis shows the ground base that Ivo has, elsewhere, commented on for Chinese copies of the Tutti Frutti design. It also has a small "pit" within the ground area. The appearance of the grinding is different from that seen on all of my Chinese weights. In fact, as grinding goes, this one is far better than on my weights! But the overall similarity is clear.