VIII. Understanding Chinese Reign Marks
Third book in this series – ISBN 978-91-985190-7-5
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A radical and new interpretation of the term ”Mark and Period.” After 15 years of work, Christer Löfgren has created a unique study that classifies Imperial reign marks on porcelain from the Qing to the Ming periods. His experience as an antique dealer, with a particular interest in Chinese porcelain, and as a geologist whose specialty is image processing, has laid the foundation for this study.
The starting point was to create a database with large quantities, thousands of so-called ”mark and period” brands. The survey covers all the Ming emperors, from the 15th century to the last emperor during the Qing period, including Hongxian, until 1920. The hypothesis was that there were only a few artists behind these marks.
According to the history of the manufacturing in Jingdezhen, it was a selected calligrapher that performed the marks and that they probably also had their peculiarities in the execution. The challenge was to be able to see what was unique for each calligraph.
With this book and the title Chinese Imperial Reign Marks, based on 5630 marks from the database compiled by Christer Löfgren, the author is shining new light on identifying Chinese Imperial marks and porcelain.
