Chinese Trinket Box, Qinglong Styled Porcelain/Gold (Circa: 1965) Macau

Description

Chinese Oval Trinket Box, Gold, Appricots, Blossoms, Porcelain. 7 ounces in weight. Even those well versed and confident in making sense of Chinese markings on pieces of Porcelain might mess up the translation on the underside of this piece. There are numerable pitfalls. An overview is that this piece is made around 1965-1970 and is decorated in the style used during the Qinglong Emperor’s reign which was (1736-1795). During his reign, China was the wealthiest and most populous nation in the world. Emperor Qinglong took his name from the even longer lasting and historic Qing Dynasty. This period of time is called the Golden Age of China out of respect of Chinese affluence as well as their lasting impacts/contributions to global competitiveness. China was basically the ‘Bill Gates’ of porcelain as they created ever larger and finer products for Europe and the Americas the consume.
On the underside is the informative seal script square. Red in this case, usually they are red.
The seal script is composed of specialized characters similar to the western world’s Latin. So, it isn’t as simple as asking someone who speaks/reads Chinese to read it. They won’t be able to. The seal script square is read from right to left (NOT L to R). It is read up to down. Here is the Seal Script broken down for you…
Reign/Porcelain marks follow a set format, and a six-character mark can be broken down as follows: the first characters is ‘Fang’ and that means to imitate. The second character is QING, referring to the whole dynasty or whole family QING which lasted (1644-1911); after which it became a communist republic.
The THIRD AND FOURTH characters refer to the name of the Emperor; in this case: QINGLONG this particular piece of porcelain not only is imitating the QING period but also a particular emperor whose name IS THE SAME NAME as the DYNASTY.
[ confusing yes! Like saying Fred from the Fred period, when the person before was Peter of the Fred Period, and the one after was Joe, of the Fred Period] This is a very confusing piece to try and learn SEAL SCRIPT but that is the end of the fourth character.
The 5th and 6th characters say Nian-Zhi which means MADE FOR. We just had QINGLONG and now we have MADE FOR. So it was made for him in the sense of Imperial Dynasties owning and directly influencing the Imperial Porcelain Factories and to be distributed among the people /sold to the people. All at the direction of the Emperor, QINGLONG. So the 5th and 6th marks refer to his reign, his leadership and the style of the Empire or time period.
Spoken it would sound like:
Fang Da Qing Qianlong Nian Zhi- "Imitate Great Qing dynasty Qianlong made-for”
The very first character is the give away, imitate. This is an authorized reproduction. Just as well because the the antiques themselves are quite pricey—so much so that for many they are not-affordable.
Gold Guilding used in 1965 would have been 22kt or 24kt gold. So be careful when cleaning it. The gold was adhered to it after the enamel paint process and firing and glazing. So it will come off. It is reapply-able but, expensive.
Oh, it is hand painted as well. In this case a neat job was done with a good amount of detail. On this piece a stencil may have been used but you can’t tell as it was done carefully. It doesn’t look like a coloring book with a bunch of black lines which you will find in lesser works of porcelain. Chinese porcelain has been in such high demand that many shortcuts were introduced that brought the value of such items down. In many cases the age doesn’t create value it is the time consuming techniques that create value.
Generally speaking production work done in Macau was intended for export.