I brought some porcelain on ebay which was marked victoria, czechoslovakia and EPIAG, Czechoslovakia. The were listed on ebay as Rosenthal. When i queried it with seller they said the following, is this right?
With reference to your comments regarding authenticity, these are indeed Rosenthal pieces, and we would like to make the following observations. During the period of the Weimar Republic (1929), when these pieces were manufactured, Rosenthal were situated on the border of Bavaria and the Sudetenland (German speaking) part of Czechoslovakia. The Rosenthal company used German citizens in this area to decorate some of the pieces that it produced in exactly the same manner as did Limoges in France and Murano in Italy. Therefore, not all Rosenthal pieces have the maker’s name on them, but the artist’s initials appear on both stamped and unstamped pieces.
Thanks
Paul
Porcelain decoration was a big hobby once, and many more or less talented people took it up as pastime, while others made a little money from it. Next to decorating classes, many ladies also established decoration clubs, etc.
These hobbyist decorators either purchased blanks or near undecorated goods, then (re)decorated them. The maker or brand of their purchases was irrelevant, most folks either decided per mold shape or their available funds. Which means that a hobbyist decorator signature is of course found on items that were created by various manufacturers … simply because the decorator took what he could lay hands on or best fitted his needs.
A seller that then finds a matching decorator mark on the goods of a renown manufacturer and then derives therefrom that EVERY item decorated by the person with the same initials MUST have been made by the same company – [i]no matter which original manufacturer mark it carries![/i] – clearly shows that he has not done his homework or is knowingly misrepresenting items.
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I could go on for hours, explaining incorrect manufacturer or decorator attributions based on signatures included in transfer decorations as well as various forms of second-quality decorations created by the so-called ‘Hausmaler’, but that would lead too far and has nothing to do with your items.
The origin of your items was explained in my previous post; an explanation for the same initials on items from various manufacturers was given here.
Seems that the seller does not want to discuss this matter further. The old-but-true ‘buyer beware’ note sounds ironic, I know. But we all have to start somewhere and every collector or even ‘expert’ at one time or the other had a similar encounter.
Don’t let that put you off 😉