Faded Nippon mark

Is this the maple leaf mark? This piece has two old staple repairs on the handle so I'm confident, if it is the maple leaf mark, it isn't a reproduction.

 

I’m not knowledgeable about this, but here’s this:
https://www.realorrepro.com/article/New-Porcelain-Marked-Nippon
Don’t know if that helps. I don’t see any in that color, but I don’t know.

 

Not an expert on this. Could be an older piece of Nippon that someone put a fake mark on.

I was looking at Gotheborg.
http://gotheborg.com/marks/20thcenturyjapan.shtml

It looks to be the Cherry Blossom mark and not the Maple Leaf. However it doesn't quite match what the Cherry Blossom mark should be.
Check the pictures under Cherry Blossom.

From the NIPPON section.
"In the 1960s, collector ranks swelled and demand for marked Nippon pieces vastly exceeded the supply. Thus arose the transfer (stencil) based fake Nippon mark applied by unscrupulous dealers to thousands of imported Japanese porcelain. This kind of marks can be identified by the mark being applied inside a glaze area looking a bit like a piece of scotch tape."

So it very well could be Nippon with a fake Nippon stencil.

 

Keeping in mind that Gotheborg is not an exhaustive compendium of marks and that this piece has what looks to me like honest evidence of age, my opinion is that it's from the 20's. I see "Japan," so after 1921.

If that mark was a stencil from the 60's, I think it would be a lot clearer.

JMHO

 

Thank you all for taking a look. Interesting and confusing. The mark doesn't have a "scotched tape" look. If the mark is a fake, it really wouldn't help to determine actual age. I thought the gold designs were very "Art Nouveau" looking and guessed it was made between 1890 to 1915 . That would be after the McKinley Tariff act required that pieces be marked with country of origin. If it did not start out with a mark, it would be earlier than 1890.

 

Funny, I don’t see any with a double scroll handle, but maybe I’m using the wrong terms.