Italian antique porcelain

Porcelain is a different material from maiolica, and it should be judged as a factory product. The Italian names collectors meet first are Capodimonte and the Naples royal works, Doccia and later Richard-Ginori, and Vezzi in Venice. Each used a paste that behaves in its own way at the rim, with moulded figures, painted flowers or armorial services, and a mark that later makers copied. A crowned N does not by itself prove eighteenth-century Capodimonte. Look at translucency, weight, how the glaze fits the foot, and whether the mark was impressed, painted or printed. Soft-paste figures chip at fingers, flowers and bases. A later cast is often sharper, lighter and too clean under the base. These articles follow the factories, the Doccia marks and the difference between an eighteenth-century figure and a nineteenth-century revival or a tourist piece. Tin-glazed pottery stays on the ceramics page.

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