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Message:: [QUOTE="pmurphy, post: 139511, member: 2119"]Just to keep you all updated, I received this response to one of my queries this morning from the Director at the International Center for East Asian Archaeology and Cultural History (ICEAACH) at Boston University.......some pretty interesting info: "Thanks for sending the interesting images of your bottle. My own area of study is the Chinese Bronze Age, so your Japanese/Chinese ceramic is pretty far outside of my area of expertise. I showed your photos to a Japanese colleague who works in 17th C. Southeast Asia, and her impression is that your bottle is a 17th-century Japanese bottle (or its Chinese imitation, which was common) from the famous ceramics center in the town of Arita, in the former Hizen Province in northwestern Kyushu. She says that the red and green colors are typical of the Japanese akae (赤絵) overglaze enamel ware. The writing style resembles Japanese but the actual grammar appears to be Chinese, which is not surprising because these phrases were copied over and over from the original Chinese sources, and often the ceramics painter made changes or mistakes." So according to his information, this would make the characters totally unreadable.  But I'm still on the hunt and will be trying to contact museums with Japanese pottery.Wish me luck....  <img src="styles/default/xenforo/smilies/smile.png" class="mceSmilie" alt=":)" unselectable="on" />[/QUOTE]