You have purchased or inherited a piece of china. The questions are: How do you tell whether you have an antique piece of china and not a modern piece or a copy? How do you tell who made your piece and how old it is? There are several techniques that collectors and dealers use when evaluating any piece of china.

Look for the Mark

The most reliable way to tell if your china is antique is to look at the factory or the manufacturer's mark. These marks can help you to determine where your china came from, how old it is and, in many cases, the quality of that china. Like a signature on a painting, a mark is essentially the maker's signature, and it is the first thing that many collectors look for before buying or valuing a piece of china. Most of these marks are underglaze, meaning that they were placed on the piece before firing. Early porcelain marks on European pieces tend to be either iron red or cobalt blue because only those pigments could survive the high temperatures when the pieces were fired.

Other Marks

Sometimes your china will have two marks--one underglaze mark that tells you the name of the factory that made the piece and the name of the decorator above the glaze. This is because one part of the factory would simply produce a "blank piece," which was then sent to be decorated by someone else in another part of the factory. Another mark that might appear on your china is the mark of the distributor or the retailer, but these stamps have little or no bearing regarding the origins or manufacture of the piece.

Things to Consider

As with any rule of thumb with china, there are exceptions and other considerations. Dresden porcelain, for example, was known for acquiring blanks from other factories and decorating them. These pieces bore other underglaze factory marks that Dresden would simply cover with their own glaze and then place a blue crown above the glaze. Also, you need to consider that many of the more popular marks were all imitated at some point or another, and often by factories that later became popular in their own right.

Source:

Antique China Porcelain and Collectibles

Hunting for Antique China

Resource:

Collector's Help and Info Page