Chinese vase that should be old

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First of all, your Web-Site is great! Specially for me as a novice in Chinese antiques there are many useful information and links.

On my last trip to China I found a pretty small (15cm height) vase which should be old.

I would like get more information about it. Do you know how old it is, where did it come from and how much it should cost.

Thank you very much in advice.

Unfortunately a late maybe contemporary piece

Thank you for your kind words about my web site.

Regarding your vase, I have spent quite some time looking at your pictures, since this is really hard to tell from a photograph alone, but I am sorry to say that it does look as if your vase might be a recent replica. The decoration just does not seem to make sense to me.

This is difficult to judge from a picture and can be almost as hard in real life. Unless you have experience and have looked at thousands of genuine pieces and shards from controlled excavations, and can therefore recognize the manner in which it is decorated, one thing to look out for are too crude bases. The porcelain potters back in Ming times strived to make as good a piece as possible, which has left us with mostly smooth, though hand-finished, bases. On porcelain, they were very rarely — in my view never — as rough as this. Some really early wares, such as those from the Yuan dynasty, can vary more than the porcelain tended to do later in the early Ming and subsequent periods, but again, in my view, this is not an early piece.

Best regards
Jan-Erik Nilsson