The Cross Swords Marks Conundrum
There is a reason the images below are spaced out in the manner they are. Its all about confusing your abilities to recognise something very important and pertinent to what all collectors, buyers and sellers of Meissen know. Read the information below to learn more.
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Your task today is to look at the above images and try to match the crossed swords marks to the images. A hint that may help you; one of the crossed swords marks above is genuine Meissen; however the painting on the piece to which the mark sits is not painted at Meissen. Now are you confused further? Ok I will help you out. Taking another look at the blue crossed swords marks how many of them are authentic and how many are fake? Now I wonder if you are confused even further still. The point I’m trying to make is unless you can recognise authentic crossed swords, authentic Meissen decoration and modelling you are going to be stumped as to what is genuine Meissen and what is not.
Another question and this may again confuse you further. Bear in mind the idea is not to confuse you on purpose but to make you more aware that throughout the world wide web there is a lot of spurious crossed swords marks, decoration and models that purport to be authentic Meissen porcelain. There will be items described as 18th century that will be made in the 20th century at Meissen or other items that have a spurious crossed swords marks that indicate the date of the mark to be the 2nd half of the 18th century. If items with these ‘fake’ crossed swords marks end up in your collection with you thinking you have an built up a collection of authentic Meissen how are you going to feel and what recourse will you have?
Some of the images above have been taken from auction sales that are no longer available.
Of course it will help recognising styles, painting, modelling, quality and other pertinent information as well as recognising the changes that occurred to the crossed swords marks through three centuries.
In order to be able to relate to task of identifying authentic crossed swords marks to the spurious your problem will be compounded by being aware that after the seven years war in 1757 to increase income the management at Meissen sold off blanks with authentic crossed swords marks. Many of these were painted outside of the Meissen factory.
These differ in their relationship as items that were recognised as Hausmalerai. Watch out for a future story about Meissen Haumalerai. Very collectable by many collectors of 18th century Meissen. The same cannot be said about later 18th and 19th century that has been outside decorated.
Until the end of May 2021 The Meissen Man invites you to send any images and he will tell you whether your item(s) are authentic Meissen or not . After this date there will be a small charge.