Amphora Vase/Table Centrepiece

I have a very ubnique (and I think valuable) Amphora vase/table centrepiece.

I have tried various catalogues but I cannot identify the markings.

Could anyone help - please.

Rod

 

It's on Chris' Unknowns.
http://www.porcelainmarksandmore.com/resources/misrepresented-marks/miscellaneous/index.php

Can you show a picture of one of the faces
Also a picture of the entire base.
Thanks.

 

Here are the extra photos

 

It is antique German bisque and was most likely made by a company named Sitzendorf. In 1884 the factory was bought by Alfred and Carl Wilhelm Voigt. Your piece was most likely made just after Voigt was in control of the company. They made pieces in bisque which was unglazed and matte like yours, and glazed porcelain pieces as well.

Some people call these pieces Dresden style bisque. Dresden wasn't a brand, but was a place in Germany that made lovely porcelain. A lot of Sitzendorf pieces have (most marks were blue in color) two parallel lines with another intersecting line crossing it as their mark. This mark was used from 1884-1902.

Here are examples of different style figurals they made:

Bisque:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/SPECTACULA...692742?hash=item366199a346:g:V4UAAOSwgrBdzIIf

Glazed Porcelain (Has the same crossed lines mark as yours on the bases of these pieces):
https://www.ebay.com/itm/Sitzendorf...359196?hash=item421671341c:g:JP8AAOSwdXhekhzc

https://www.ebay.com/itm/ANTIQUE-CH...061392?hash=item342828cad0:g:CpoAAOSwzCFek2M9

 

Actually the mark does not match Sitzendorf. And I doubt it is antique.
These are Sitzendorf marks (also from Chris' site)
https://www.porcelainmarksandmore.com/germany/thuringia/sitzendorf-01/index.php

@SYNCHRONCITY
Just because it is listed on ebay as something, unless you know the seller is correct, you really need to research.
Only two of your examples may actually be Sitzendorf. One definitely isn't.

 

@Rod F
Thank you for adding the pictures.
Are the faces as thin as it shows in your picture? If so then I am thinking this is newer as in after the 1960s.
May indeed be German. Nice decorative piece, but unfortunately not the answer you are looking for in terms of age.

Amphora is from Austria, which I don't think this is.

 

Hopefully, @janetpjohn or @say_it_slowly will see this and respond.

@anundverkaufen
Is this something you might know about?

 

I was wrong according to the link you posted. I was mistaken because I had an older antique porcelain reference book (forgot the name of it) over 10 years ago that showed the slightly squiggly mark crossing through two parallel lines as Sitzendorf. Some of the Sitzendorf crossed lines marks I have seen in this book showed as straight lines too and were also shown as examples of their marks in this out of print book that was written sometime in the 80's.

Since my reference book is older, the attribution may have been off because some newer information may have come to light and some of those older reference books need to be updated. If I find it, I will post pictures and show you what I mean about the marks attributed to Sitzendorf.

Some Japanese companies sometime in the 1950's used to make reproduction style German bisque pieces like this, but OP's looks like it is an older German piece. The reason I say this is because of the pushed in pupils on the eyes. Better antique bisque figures generally had those pushed in pupils and the newer contemporary pieces usually almost always lack this feature.

The only other German company that made really poor quality bisque figurals which were sometimes as poor as the Japanese ones, were by Hertwig and Limbach. They made bisque figurals sometime around the very end of the 1800's-early 20th Century. Most of them (not all) were made of very thin bisque and were poorly painted, but OP's bisque looks like it is of nice quality.

With that being said, there were some companies in the US like ArnArt Imports who used to import and sell Japanese bisque figures in the mid 20th Century that looked like old time German pieces. The Japanese ones were very light weight and poorly painted. I wonder if the OP can weigh the piece for us to give us an idea of the weight. Weighing it won't give us a 100% definitive answer of it's quality, but it helps us because good quality, old German bisque has weight to it. The more contemporary copies were very thin and lightweight.


Other German companies used crossed hatch (lines) marks too such as Alt Beck & Gottschalck, Von Schierholtz/Plaue and quite a few others.

I used to collect and sell lots of German bisque figures until I moved on to collecting antique bisque head dolls. There were a lot of German manufacturing firms making bisque, so pinpointing an exact factory may be difficult. There were porcelain making factories that faked German, French and other major porcelain manufacturer marks too such as the French firm Samson.

I hope the OP can give us some more photos of the details so we can look over his or her piece better to truly clue us all in on how old this piece is. From the few pics I see here, it does look old, but I am not an expert and can easily be wrong.

Sorry if I caused any confusion earlier.

 

Thank you all for your amazing input. I will post more pictures tomorrow and will weigh the piece as well (but it is quite heavy).

Rod

 

I'm sorry I'm not going to be much help. I did check Röntgen's book of Marks on German, Bohemian and Austrian Porcelain without seeing it. Chris Marshall on his Porcelain Marks & More site is probably the best "go to". He is a member here so perhaps he'll look in and comment if he has additional info not yet on his site. @Chris Marshall

I tried to blow up the photo of the base and while it could be digital distortion it looks like some impressed letters around the hole in the base. Perhaps Rod could double check.

 

From the photos, I too think it's an older piece.

 

Mid 1900s is roughly 50 -70 years old.