Author Topic: Royal Vienna China  (Read 1592 times)

jondar

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Royal Vienna China
« on: August 24, 2009, 12:04:00 pm »
We were recently given a china small bowl with lid finished in gold enamel.  The marking on the bottom is a crown over "vienna" over two coats of arms that I can't make out) over Austria.  We know the provenance of this piece back to the 1880's.  On one of the other sites showing faked Royal china they say anything with Vienna in the mark is a fake.  Is this true?  I'll try to show the mark with a picture.
Even without the magnification the mark is a little blurry.  thanks      Jon

Chris_Marshall

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Re: Royal Vienna China
« Reply #1 on: August 24, 2009, 01:47:31 pm »
Clarification: the only 'Royal Vienna' was of course made in Vienna and was never marked as such, it only carries a small version of the Bindenschild marking which is often incorrectly called a 'beehive mark'. Ever since the closure of the facility that mark became the most misused, abused, faked and copied mark worldwide. It is also a plain fact that real items from the Royal Vienna facility will *never* be found online and especially not in people's attics, cellars or some long-lost-and-suddenly-rediscovered locker once owned by Elvis (or Michael Jackson if you prefer) as all the original items have long found their ways into museums from shortly after the end of the 18th century onwards; already 1864 no original items were freely available. Go figure.

The claim "... anything with Vienna in the mark is a fake ..." originated on a (luckily long closed) site where the poster tried to make it clear that everything marked 'Vienna' is definately not Royal Vienna and thus items offered as such were bogus. That backfired as many people copied that without using their brains and by now think that 'Vienna' marked items in general are fake or of Asian origin, totally disregarding all the legit markings which include the term 'Vienna'.

One additional claim mentions that the mark on your item was used on the Vienna China line from the Thun factory in the town of Kloesterle in Bohemia (today Klášterec); that however is nonsense as various founding dates and mark versions available (e.g. containing '1790') collide, in addition the Thun factory more than once denied that story and I am not the only person that tends to believe the manufacturer no matter what some self-proclaimed 'expert' says, named Kovels or not.

What can be said is that the mark was never registered in Germany or Austria; as for the origin one can only say that it's an importer/distributor mark used in sequence by PH Leonard, then Bawo & Dotter, followed by Charles Dwenger and finally Paul Straub & Co on items ordered from various Bohemian manufacturers between 1890 and 1915.

KC

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Re: Royal Vienna China
« Reply #2 on: August 24, 2009, 03:15:20 pm »
Thanks for your input Chris.  Always wonderful to have an expert on the site.

So much to learn.....
I'm from the South - but please don't mistake my Southern Manners/Accent/Charm as a weakness!

jondar

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Re: Royal Vienna China
« Reply #3 on: August 24, 2009, 06:52:41 pm »
Yes, thank you.