How to Identify Antique Chinese Porcelain: A Dealer's Checklist

How to identify antique Chinese porcelain with a twelve-point checklist: foot rim, body, glaze, cobalt, enamels, wear, marks, condition and provenance.

Turn the bowl over before you look at the front. The unglazed ring of the foot is the only place where a piece of Chinese porcelain shows you its body naked: the colour of the fired clay, the tool marks left when it was trimmed, the flush of orange where iron in the paste met the kiln air, and the smooth, faintly greasy polish that two centuries of tables put on a rim. The front of a piece was made to persuade you. The foot was not made for you at all, which is why dealers begin there.

This guide sets out the twelve checks a dealer runs through, in the order they are made, and says for each what a positive result proves and what it does not. No single observation authenticates a piece, because Jingdezhen has always copied its own past; the method is cumulative, and a piece has to pass every check, not most of them. You will be able to handle a piece with purpose, read the foot rim and the body, examine the glaze and the cobalt under a loupe, tell honest wear from manufactured wear, put the reign mark in its proper, secondary place, and know when to call in a laboratory or a specialist. Keep a ten-power loupe, a small torch and a soft cloth to hand, and work over a padded surface.

Checks 1 and 2: weight, potting and shape

Weight in the hand is the first thing an experienced eye registers and the hardest for a copyist to get right, because it depends on the paste recipe, the thickness of the walls and the firing. Ming pieces tend to be heavier for their size than their Qing counterparts, and Yongzheng porcelain is famously thin and even. Modern reproductions run to extremes, either dense and glassy or suspiciously light.

Then run a finger inside. A thrown piece carries throwing rings, faint spiral ridges from the potter's hands, and its walls vary a little in thickness. A slip-cast piece has walls of uniform thickness and may show a faint vertical seam where the mould halves met. Shape is the second check: proportions, the profile of the neck, the angle of the shoulder and the form of the foot all follow the fashion of a reign. Our guide to Chinese porcelain vase shapes gives the vocabulary; a shape that never existed in the reign the mark claims ends the examination.

Checks 3 and 4: the foot rim and the body

The foot rim is where most fakes fail. The colour of the exposed paste: white and fine on imperial Qing, greyer and coarser on provincial and late wares, chalky and dead white on many modern pieces. The profile: Yongzheng and Qianlong imperial feet are often rounded and smooth, the so-called loach-back, niqiu bei, while Ming feet are more often cut square, with sand or kiln grit fused to the base. The tool marks: concentric trimming lines and, on Kangxi and some Ming pieces, chatter marks, tiaodao hen, where the trimming tool bounced. And the iron flush, huoshihong, an orange to rust-coloured bloom where iron in the body oxidised at the unglazed surface during firing. Genuine flush grades into the paste and is uneven; painted flush sits on the surface, stops at a neat line and is the same tone all the way round. Our article on dating Chinese porcelain by the foot rim goes deeper.

The body is the fourth check. Hold a thin piece up to a torch: good eighteenth-century porcelain transmits a warm, slightly bluish light evenly through the wall. Feel the unglazed paste with a fingertip. The smooth, waxy texture the trade calls glutinous-rice paste, nuomi tai, belongs to the finest Yongzheng and Qianlong bodies and is not found on later imitations.

Checks 5 and 6: the glaze and its bubbles

Under a ten-power loupe a glaze is a landscape. Early Ming glazes are thick and slightly cloudy, with bubbles of varied size and an orange-peel surface, jupi wen, on Yongle and Xuande pieces. Kangxi glazes are thin, tight and glassy with small, dense bubbles. Late Qing glazes tend to be thin and greyish or faintly greenish, with a looser scatter of bubbles. Modern glazes are often almost bubble-free, and when they do contain bubbles the bubbles are uniform in size.

The sixth check is the surface of the glaze. Old glaze acquires a soft, inward lustre the trade calls baoguang, treasure light; a new glaze has zeiguang, thief's glare, a hard outward shine. Forgers kill the glare with acid or abrasives, and what they leave behind is a dull, even matt that scatters light uniformly under a torch, unlike the patchy softening of real age. Look too at the line where glaze meets foot: on many Ming and Qing pieces there is a thin thread of orange where the glaze thinned over the body.

Checks 7 and 8: cobalt and enamels

The cobalt in underglaze blue tells you where and roughly when it was refined. Early Ming imperial blue-and-white used imported cobalt rich in iron, which fired to a deep, inky blue with black-brown crystalline spots that sink below the glaze surface and can be felt as tiny depressions, the effect called heaping and piling. Jiajing and Wanli blue leans to violet; Kangxi's is a clear sapphire laid on in graded washes, fenshui, of up to five tones; nineteenth-century blue is often pale, greyish or purplish and flatly applied. Modern chemical cobalt is bright, even and clean. Yongzheng potters and modern fakers alike imitate the Xuande spots by dotting the outlines with dark pigment; dotted spots sit on the surface and follow the line too neatly. Our article on the cobalt in blue-and-white porcelain has the history.

Overglaze enamels are the eighth check. The famille verte palette, wucai, of Kangxi is translucent and sits in low relief; the famille rose palette, fencai, that arrived at the end of his reign brought an opaque pink derived from colloidal gold and an opaque white for shading. Old enamels show a faint iridescent halo, geli guang, clam-shell lustre, where the lead in the enamel has reacted with the air over decades. Bright, glassy enamels with no halo on a piece claiming two centuries are a warning, and so is a halo that is too regular. For the technical background see our guide to famille rose fencai enamels.

Check 9: the painting itself

Look at the decoration as a painting, not as a pattern. Period painters worked fast, from long practice, and their lines have the confidence of speed: a dragon's spine drawn in one stroke. Copyists work slowly from a photograph, and their lines are hesitant, broken and evenly weighted. Under the loupe, rule out mechanical decoration: transfer prints and decals, used from the twentieth century, show a dot or hatched screen, edges that are too crisp, and none of the slight pooling a brush leaves where it stops.

Check 10: wear, and the difference between age and abrasion

Real wear is random. On a foot rim it is a soft, all-over polish with fine scratches running in every direction, heavier on the points that touch the table; inside a bowl it is a haze of scratches concentrated where a spoon or chopsticks worked, fading toward the wall; on the glaze it is scattered, not continuous. Manufactured wear is patterned: parallel scratches from sandpaper or a grinding wheel, or a matt band of uniform width around a rim. Wear is also selective: a used piece shows it where hands and cloths touch and nowhere else, while an artificially aged piece is worn everywhere at once.

Check 11: the mark, last and least

The reign mark is the check most beginners make first and most dealers make last, because it proves the least. Marks of earlier reigns were applied throughout the Qing, and marks of the great Qing reigns were applied throughout the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. A Kangxi piece with a Chenghua mark is normal; a modern piece with a Qianlong seal mark is normal too. Read the mark for its calligraphy, the colour and depth of its cobalt, and its consistency with everything the first ten checks have told you. Our article on how to spot fake Chinese porcelain marks covers the character forms and the common tells. A good mark confirms a good piece; it never rescues a bad one.

Check 12: condition, restoration and paperwork

Under an ultraviolet torch in a dark room, modern paints, resins and fillers fluoresce differently from fired glaze, and overpainted cracks, filled chips and replaced sections show as dull patches against the glow of the original surface. Tap the rim gently with a knuckle; a clear ring says the body is sound, a dull note says a crack or a repair, though the ring says nothing about age. Distinguish kiln flaws, which are part of the object, from damage, which is not.

Then read the paperwork with the same scepticism. Old collection labels, inventory numbers, auction stickers and exhibition records are valuable when they can be tied to the piece and traced. A red wax export seal shows that a piece passed through a state antiques shop or customs inspection in the second half of the twentieth century, a clue to its route out of China rather than to its date, and such seals have themselves been faked. Our guide to Chinese art provenance documents explains what each kind of paper is worth.

The twelve checks in one place

Weight. Right for the reign and the size, neither glassy-dense nor featherlight.
Potting and shape. Throwing rings, varied wall thickness, a profile that existed in the claimed reign.
Foot rim. Paste colour, foot profile, tool marks and a natural iron flush.
Body. Even translucency, fine grain, the waxy texture on the best Qing pieces.
Glaze bubbles. Size and density matching a reference for the reign.
Glaze surface. Soft inward lustre, patchy age, an honest glaze edge at the foot.
Cobalt. Colour, application and heaping and piling consistent with the period source.
Enamels. Palette correct for the reign, a natural halo, edge losses where expected.
Painting. Speed and confidence in the line, no printed screen.
Wear. Random, selective and heaviest where hands and tables touch.
Mark. Calligraphy and cobalt consistent with the piece, read last.
Condition and provenance. No hidden restoration under ultraviolet light, and paperwork that can be traced.

Common questions

How can you tell if Chinese porcelain is antique?

Begin with the foot rim and the body, not the mark. An antique piece shows a paste colour, foot profile and iron flush that fit its claimed reign, random wear concentrated where the piece was handled, a soft lustre to the glaze with bubbles of varied size, and cobalt or enamels whose colour and behaviour match the period materials. A piece that passes all of those and carries a mark consistent with them is worth taking further; one that fails any of them is not, whatever the mark says.

Does a reign mark prove the age of Chinese porcelain?

No. Reign marks of earlier emperors were applied as tributes throughout the Qing dynasty, and marks of the great Qing reigns have been applied to new porcelain continuously since the late nineteenth century. A mark can support a date that the body, glaze, cobalt, wear and shape have already established; it cannot establish one on its own, and a large share of the marked pieces you meet are later than their marks.

What tools do you need to examine Chinese porcelain?

A ten-power loupe for glaze bubbles, cobalt spots and printed screens; a small bright torch for translucency and for raking light across wear; an ultraviolet torch for restoration; a soft cloth and a padded surface. Laboratory tests are a backstop, not a starting point: thermoluminescence dating serves earthenware figures rather than high-fired porcelain, while X-ray fluorescence can characterise the cobalt and the glaze when a piece justifies the cost.

What are the most common fakes of antique Chinese porcelain?

Blue-and-white with Kangxi, Qianlong or Xuande marks, followed by famille rose with Yongzheng and Qianlong marks and monochromes with Qing seal marks. The tells are the ones above: painted iron flush, uniform bubbles, dotted-in heaping and piling, chemical cobalt, enamels without a halo, parallel abrasion and a mark better than the piece. Most fakes fail at the foot rim before you reach the front.

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Porcelain is a subject Kiln & Ink writes about rather than one we stock. What we make are limited-edition archival giclée reproductions of the twentieth-century Chinese ink masters, hand-numbered and issued with a Certificate of Authenticity. Browse the collections to see the current editions.