Similar to other situations where there are no mandatory identification requirements, Japanese silverware usually only has two markings: the person responsible and the quality. Even if there are removable parts (such as pot lids and box lids), they are usually only marked. Make a set of marks on the subject. However, on some products we can still find origin information, Mint grade certification marks, and special US occupation period marks, etc.
However, a considerable number of early and mid-Meiji products and royal ceremony gifts are completely unlabeled. At most, the name of the producer and the description of the material can only be found on the original packaging. Most of the works of some metalworkers, such as Nakagawa Jingyi and Ikhesai, only have the author's name on them, without marking the material. However, various stores and department stores are just the opposite. Many products only carry material or purity marks, and other information is written on the box or printed on the label and included promotional materials.
1. Responsible person's mark
On Japanese gold and silver products, the responsible person's mark ("engraving") can be divided into two categories: the producer's mark and the craftsman's name. If the producer is a foreign businessman, he will directly use the English name. Japanese businessmen will sometimes use the Japanese name, and sometimes use the corresponding Japanese Latin notation. For example, SAMURAI Chamber of Commerce mostly uses "SAMURAI SHOKAI", and there are also a few with "SAMURAI" styles.
Generally speaking, the artifacts with only the marks consisting of kana and Chinese characters are mostly sold domestically or given as gifts, while the marks consisting of Western characters and numbers are mainly used on foreign vessels. However, there are some exceptions. For example, the products of Yokohama exporters are only labeled as "Musashiya Sterling Silver" without any English logo.
Many art stores, watch shops, department stores, etc. sell Western-style silverware, and their customers include both locals and European and American people. Both cannot exist.
In fact, except for the Surayo Chamber of Commerce, which uses katakana instead of "Samurai Chamber of Commerce" in its name, the names of other domestic businesses in Japan are almost entirely composed of Chinese characters. Before World War II, most Chinese famous inscriptions were arranged vertically, with fewer horizontal ones and almost all written from right to left. After the 1950s, the number of famous inscriptions written in Chinese from left to right gradually increased.
The producer's logo can also be in the form of a seal, mainly in seal-cut form, but also in regular script. The names of firms sometimes have the words "made", "made" or "jinzhi" at the end, even if they are only dealers rather than actual producers, such as "Koichi Zai", "Ozeki", "Tamawu Jinzhi", etc. The use of the word "carefully made" sometimes implies that the object was custom-made for royalty or nobility.
There are also many marked with trademarks or patterns, most of which are products after the Taisho period, such as the Asuka in the Hattori Timepiece Store, the Koshi in a circle at the Mitsukoshi Department Store, and the capital letters in the five-pointed star in the Yamazaki Store. The letter "S", etc., some signs even only have trademarks on them, without the store name.
The signature of the metalworker can often be seen on Japanese metal crafts. They are usually engraved directly on the work in vertical cursive script and placed in the lower left corner of the main decorative pattern - this is because the pattern is mostly from the right side. Start, otherwise it will appear in the lower right. This kind of signature is usually only the name part, and the full name is rarely used.
Even fewer have the surname alone, which may actually be a special form of the manufacturer's logo. If the author is a gold engraver, the most common inscription format is to add the word "engraved", "knife" or "engraved" to the name, such as "Guangshan Engraving" and "Guangchun Dao" (Gui Guangchun).
For utensils whose main surface decoration techniques are enamel, welding, and chiseling without any carving, the word "made" or "made" is usually added, such as "Tadajiuzou" (Matsuo Tadashi) and "Issin" do". There are also signatures without any modifying text, such as a single "正秀".
The goldsmith's name is often designed when making the mold, and will be cast together with the work, but there are also cases where it is engraved separately. For goldsmiths who use steel stamps, such as some pot masters, if a piece of work is not sold by them themselves but distributed through a store, it may bear the marks of both.
Some craftsmen also add monograms and seals under their names, which was mainly popular from the end of the Tokugawa period to the Taisho period. This form of monogram originated in ancient my country and is still used in modern Japan. In art works, they usually appear immediately after the famous money, which has a certain anti-counterfeiting effect. Some workshops that use steel stamps to make money also have similar practices. For example, Hirata Shigemitsu's family often uses a logo composed of "Shigemitsu" and a monogram.
The logos of Katsushi Kitamura Shizuka and his disciples Kimura Setsuzo, Matsumoto Haruzo and others, who are famous for their "gut punching" craftsmanship, are simply a single monogram. Craftsmen's seals are relatively rare on silverware, and are more commonly used in other metal products. Some are directly engraved, stamped with steel stamps, and some are added through partial gold plating or misaligned inlay techniques.
The text content on the chapter can be a name, a font size or even a free chapter. For example, Umino Shengmin's name was Fangzhou (he often engraved "Fangzhou Zongshi Shengmin" on his works, and sometimes signed "Fangzhou Sou Shengmin" in his later years), and he once used the seal "Fangzhou Sheng". The "ancient and rare old man" seal added to several works of Natsuo Kanana after he was 70 years old are examples of idle seals.
Most of the military-issued products after World War II, especially small silverware, do not carry the manufacturer's mark. This is most common on batch products (such as spice boxes and commemorative spoons). Related The information is usually on the packaging. Without the box, there is no way to tell. However, on products with engraving technology, especially cigarette boxes, cigar boxes, wine cups, vases and other appliances with a large display space, the signature of the gold engraver will usually be engraved even if the dealer does not pay.
2. Material and quality markings
In the early Meiji period and earlier, most gold and silverware sold in Japan did not have material markings, and the material was most often mentioned when writing the product name on the packaging box. This is also true for most of the works of metalworkers whose names have been inherited from generation to generation (i.e., the Iemoto system), vessels with silver bases inlaid with other alloy materials, and silver-based inlays with fine Shibayama snails.
Yokohama's export houses generally used English material models from the beginning. In the Showa era, they further expanded to products in watch and jewelry stores and department stores, including "SILVER", "STERLING", "STERLING SILVER" and "PURE SILVER" "wait.
Chinese material markings also existed during the Meiji period, and gradually became popular after the Taisho period. There are mainly two types: "sterling silver" and "made of silver". Occasionally, you can see the three-character "made of pure silver", and the more rare single-character "silver" and "pure". Starting roughly from the Showa era, sterling silverware and silver-plated wares were collectively referred to as silver products. Therefore, some people also used "silver" models for silver-plated wares, especially in the early postwar period, as a substitute for silverware.
However, if it is sold by a well-known firm, it can usually be considered to be real silver. Among the new products since the 1980s, those with "silver" models are basically made of pure silver. After all, the Japanese were already relatively wealthy at this time, and there was no need to play word games to get some small money. The fineness in Chinese characters is sometimes combined with the product name as a label, such as "Sterling Silver Hattori System" and so on.
Commonly used words for sterling silver in Japanese silverware are "nansha" and "fine silver". They usually appear on the packaging boxes of traditional products, and are rarely marked on the utensils in the form of inscriptions. See. The term Nanzhao may have originated from a silver producing area (Nanting) in ancient my country. In Japan, it initially referred to high-quality silver imported from overseas. By the end of the Muromachi period and the Azuchi-Momoyama period, it gradually evolved to refer to all high-quality silver. An elegant name for good quality silver.
The Tokugawa shogunate has issued a silver coin with the same name several times since the 9th year of Meiwa (1772). The text on the back of each coin is "Exchange eight pieces of Nansha for one or two small pens." . One tael is equal to sixteen Zhu, so this is actually a two-Zhu silver coin. The newly minted coins of the same type in the late Edo period have been directly renamed "Nizhu Gin". However, due to the quaint elegance of the word Nanzhu, many metalworkers still prefer it when naming traditional items such as tea sets, Japanese wine vessels and ceremonial utensils. Instead of overly literal words like "sterling silver".
The etymology of "fine silver" is also in our country.
"Guixin Miscellaneous Knowledge" written by Zhou Mi at the end of the Song Dynasty and the beginning of the Yuan Dynasty said: "Silver products, there are those with patterns like Luo Jia, those with pine patterns, those with middle depressions and high Guo, all are fine silver, and they are exquisite. "The color is green." This word is also often seen in Yuan songs, and it also means silver with high purity.
After 1920, numerical purity marks became more and more popular. After World War II, nine out of ten instruments sold for export carried a thousandth fineness value. The most common one is 950, but there are also 925, 970, 980, 990, 995, 997, 998, 999, and even 1000—Japan may be an extremely rare country that has long used theoretical purity values ??such as 1000 and 24K that cannot be achieved in practice.
Before the advent of modern processes such as vacuum casting and centrifugal casting, high-purity silver was not suitable for casting due to its material characteristics. Therefore, cast silver products would use raw materials with slightly lower fineness. For example, the marks on incense burners and ornaments made by Uchijima Ichihira (Qingfeng) are usually "Silver 900" or "Silver 925". In addition to parts per thousand, purity in percent and decimal form is occasionally found.
Some mixing spoons and pendants made in Nagasaki are marked 84, which is strange. Nagasaki is a treaty port that has maintained limited opening since the end of the Tokugawa period, so it is normal for silverware to be exported. Such products are all cast in one piece and then partially engraved and decorated, so it is understandable that the quality is low.
As for why the value "84" was chosen, it seems to be related to the influence of Russia. The specific situation is not clear yet. Cast silver devices with the 84 pattern are rare and are likely to be the products of individual local manufacturers.
English materials are often connected with purity values, forming marks such as "SILVER 950" and "STERLING 950". Most of these are products produced after World War II, with cigarette boxes being the most common, and most of them do not carry information about those responsible. Judging from the surviving packaging and promotional cards, the producers were mainly those major department stores and shops of watches, fine arts, and precious metals.
Western characters and numerals usually use Yin script, but the situation of Chinese material markings is more complicated. Before the "World War II", Yang script was more common, and the glyphs were mainly seal script and thicker regular script. Most of them are in handwriting style, and the text is basically arranged vertically or horizontally from right to left.
After the "World War II", the use of thin lines in inscriptions gradually increased, and most of them were arranged horizontally from left to right. Many of the "sterling silver" and "silver" models used in new works after the 1970s and 1980s have regular printed fonts, which are very similar to computer fonts (Ming Dynasty style), which reflects the printing method and steel stamp production process. changes. However, famous metalworkers often use the style and form of inscriptions and stamps in the family's history, and some newly minted kettle masters and silverware craftsmen imitate the traditional shape of "sterling silver" marks.
5. Mint grade certification mark
Japan is one of the few Asian countries that has established an identification system. Its official precious metal inspection agency is the Mint, so the relevant mark is called " The Mint's Proof of Grade mark currently consists of two symbols: a date flag representing the country of origin and a millimeter purity value in a diamond-shaped frame.
Since it was promulgated in the form of "Tibet Ministry Order No. 12" in 1928, the details of the system have been revised many times. The last revision was in April 2012. In order to comply with international standards, all purity values ??of 1000 were changed to 999.
Since the establishment of the identification system in Japan, submission for inspection and marking has been voluntary for most periods and is not a prerequisite for products to be marketed and traded. Therefore, this symbol is most commonly used on utensils and commemorative medals made by the Mint, such as silver wine glasses processed for government agencies and given to civil servants, police officers, and firefighters who have served for a certain number of years, as well as within and related mint systems. Souvenirs required by organizations (such as Quanyouhui), etc.
Other merchants also have some products with this logo, and many of them may also be customized products with a background.
6. Foreign laboratory marks
Foreign laboratory marks on Japanese silverware are rare and far less common than Chinese silverware with such marks.
Most of them have British import labels, and Swedish import labels have also been seen. There are also a small number of silver animal ornaments with movable joints ("free storage") and containers with Spanish labels. They are basically products of the 1960s and 1970s