Kangxi-Style Vase, ca. 1880
![](https://www-tc.pbs.org/prod-media/antiques-roadshow/__sized__/Images/Tampa_19990605_02/199901A13/anro-001826-wa199901A13-hires-crop-c0-03__0-03-676x380.jpg)
GUEST:
I purchased the vase in Long Island, New York, in 1975 for $800.
APPRAISER:
This is a great example of how scholarship is changing. It is a pattern that one would call a prunus pattern, and it's called famille noire, which is just sort of a black ground. This was popular in the Kangxi period, which was 1662 to 1722, and if you turn this over, you see it has a mark that says indeed it was made in the Kangxi period. It's written in underglazed blue writing on the porcelain body. Things like this were made in one place in China, which is the city called Jingdezhen, which was the central manufacturing center for the manufacture of porcelain. And this particular type of vase was also something that was very much collected by Americans, including J.P. Morgan, and you find wonderful examples throughout the United States, in the Metropolitan Museum, major museums will have famille noire examples. What's interesting about this though is although it has all these things that look like it's from the Kangxi period, it is not because in fact, the way that this decoration is done, the way the painting is done, when you compare it side-by-side with a Kangxi original, it's much stiffer than the Kangxi version. Scholarship since the early '80s has changed so much that now, any expert in this field would be able to look at this and say it's not Kangxi, and in fact it is probably around 1880 made as a copy. In spite of all that, it still has a fairly good value. I would say it's worth around $800 to $1,200, $1,500.
GUEST:
Okay, thank you.
Appraisal Details
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