long shot but anyone on here able to identify antique chinese marks

[Crispbutty]

I have a plate that I inherited from antique collecting parents. It is very very old, and it has an impressed mark. Unfortunately I am not great at chinese marks.

It’s Japanese. Yanatogu. Probably just a makers name?

Yamatogu, sorry.

I googled and the ‘gu’ is a ku. It looked like gu in the picture.

Yamatoku. Seems well known.

brilliant! thats a good start.. thankyou so much :)

No probs.

It could be Yamatogu, but also read the other way, could be Tokuyama - the picture isn't clear, but if the bottom left hand character has two little dots/lines to the top right hand side, it is pronounced 'gu', if the dark mark that appears in that position is just a blemish then it is 'ku'.

Tokuyama is a place name, so could be the location of the maker, and is a more likely reading than Yamatogu or Toguyama, in my opinion.

Ah, just seen updated post - Yamatoku makes more sense.

I have found something by Yamatoku which exactly matches the mark, so thankyou sooooo much for that. It wont fund my retirement, but it might buy a takeaway if I sell it! :)

while I have your attention though.. any ideas on this one. last one I promise!! :)

That one is Kutani.

Fabulous. You have both saved me hours of trying to find those. Much appreciated. If its jewellery or european ceramics I am usually fairly good as that is my "area" but when it comes to asian antiques I am pretty clueless, so I have kept all of that to one side until now.. apart from a few bits that I have probably sold at ridiculously cheap prices at the car boot sale.. eek!

third one and i promise the last, but this one has defeated me for a long time. its a solid bronze carved thing..

I thought this one would be tricky. I’ve been trying to research it for a long time.

Sorry! It’s faded in all the wrong places. I can’t see the characters. If it is characters. The loopiness of the top part doesn’t look Japamese or Chinese to me.

It’s definitely one of those but I agree the wear to it doesn’t help. Arghh.

The bronze thing is also Japanese - your picture of the mark is upside down (as was the Kutani one, by the way) and the top characters are too worn to read in the pic (might be easier in real life without glare etc). The bottom character is (I think) an archaic hiragana which is read 'wi', now usually replaced with 'i'. Sorry, that's not much help with the full mark, but it is definitely Japanese. They produced a lot of bronze objects like that for export in the Meiji era (late 19th century).

That’s brilliant. Thankyou again for you help. Hopefully that last one is actually worth a bit too. Fingers crossed. :)