Well, I actually think it is rather charming. Look at the lovely horse - and the handles.  I feel some effort has gone into this and I would say it has some age, I am not sure exactly how old, but maybe the faces can give a clue.  I feel drawn to 19th c but am worried that is becoming my non-committal stock answer!  ?  

I like it, hope some one can give you a better answer.

JUlia

Hello Michael:

I'll go out on a limb here. Actually, I think this vase is rather pretty. However, I don't think I have ever seen one so badly damaged. It looks like it has survived several wars. It is famille rose. The pattern is a variant of Rose Mandarin  and the figures are fairly well done. The rim has a gilt edge and there is gilt around the cartouches. The decoration around the foot is different to that I'm accustomed to seeing on Rose Mandarin or Rose Medallion porcelains.  The vase seems to combine a number of different styles. The handles seem to be foo dogs. My guess is that the vase probably dates from the early to the mid-twentieth century.

I'm very averse to damage and defects in porcelains and thus have never had anything repaired. However, the damage is so extensive here that I would imagine that a repair that would restore the vase to its original state would be very costly and I somehow doubt that that is worth doing. You can get good quality Rose Mandarin vases of this size on eBay for about $600 - $800. Peter recently on one of his weekly videos showed a rather lovely one of this size that sold at auction on Catawiki for that amount. Unless you are especially attached to this vase, I would think the money spent on a good repair might be better spent on getting a  19th century vase with this pattern but in a good state of repair.  There are a lot of them around on eBay and no one seems especially passionate about them so that they are relatively inexpensive.  SEE THIS LINK   for a reasonably nice pair of Rose Canton vases going for $700 as  Buy It Now items on eBay and included on bidamount.com and from a reputable seller. The seller is accepting offers so they could probably be had for about $580 (see photograph below) and there are many others. 

Good luck!

Regards,

Errol

Dear Erroll,

Thank you for the information plus going to the trouble of looking up some examples much appreciated.  I think what i might do is wait till we get to the new place in January and soak it some warm water and detergent and try and dissolve the old glue and re stick it with modern glue. No parts are missing so no modeling or filling and painting skills are need.  Make a insert and turn it into a lamp.

Regards

Michael

I agree it's probably early C20th ,  I think  C19th rose madarin vases and other items  have gold highlights in the ladies' hair etc.

I also think it's not worth repairing professionally 

Dear Tam,

Thank YOU !

Michael

Hi Michael,

I would date your vase to 1870-90 according to the painting style of the faces. It's a very nice vase, above average in my opinion. You might see if a thorough cleaning already helps. Considering a professional repair will depend on how important it is to you personally. A repair does neither add nor detract from the value as far as I know, it's just nicer to look at, at least for me.

The vases Eroll shows are typical Rose Mandarin examples, they are from roughly the same time period. It's a question of personal taste if you prefer the little people on a terrace or the figures with the upward looking eyes. Tommy Eklöf has two categories for these faces, q16 resp. q18.

 Dear Julia,

Thank YOU!

Michael

Dear Shinigami,

Thank YOU!

Michael

Dear Birgit and Tam:

Thanks for the useful link for Tommy Eklof's book! I was aware of the book but not of the YouTube videos which I now plan on watching.

I was interested in Tam's point regarding 19th century and earlier Rose Mandarin pieces have gilt highlights in the hair of depicted ladies.  I have no idea how specific that feature is in distinguishing between 19th century and later Rose Mandarin/Medallion porcelains. However, I have several 19th century Rose Mandarin and Rose Medallion items including a pair of 19th century vases that are about 14 inches in height and that I obtained through a reliable dealer in the Netherlands. I checked them and the other items and all had gilt highlights in ladies' hair and indeed more gilt in general on the vases than was evident on Michael's vase (see photographs). Of course, Michael's vase has been through a lot of trauma and the gilt, if it was ever present other than on the rim and on the borders of the cartouches, might have been lost as a result of inappropriate cleaning methods or just general deterioration. However, I would be interested in how confident Tam is about the gilt highlights and their accuracy in distinguishing between 19th  and 20th century Rose Mandarin and Rose medallion porcelains.

Best regards,

Errol

Dear Eroll, 

Michael‘s vase is not Rose Medallion, it’s a different painting style  

What you show in your pictures is Rose Medallion. The gold in the hair is only one way of determining the age. Another feature is that the little people, looking quite normal in the 1840s, are getting shorter and shorter over the 19th century. In late 19th century they look rather comical. Your beautiful vases might be from the 1860s, as the people are small but not yet tiny, and there’s still gold in the hair. 

Sorry I wanted to say Rose Mandarin. Rose Medallion is the flowers and birds version. 

Dear Birgit:

I agree that the two vases I used to illustrate my above post are Rose Medallion. I agree also that Michael's vase while it has features of Rose Mandarin (there are mainly people on it) is atypical - I think I called it a variant in my original post. The foot decoration does not fit with Rose Mandarin or Rose Medallion and looks twentieth century to me.

Although I enjoyed Peter's short video on distinguishing between Rose Mandarin, Rose Medallion and Rose Canton the distinction does not seem to work in real life. Would you agree that most of those pieces we see all over are Rose Medallion in other words they have both people and  birds, flowers and precious objects as their decoration? I have yet to see any porcelain item in this style that has only people on it (Rose Mandarin) or only flowers and birds (Rose Canton). Perhaps, if we use the word "predominant" as in "predominantly flowers and birds,'' the distinction works. Otherwise, even experienced eBay and Catawiki sellers seem to use the three terms interchangeably.

Regarding Michael's vase, I know he does not plan to have it professionally restored. Does anyone know, however, if he did want to do that, what the approximate cost would be of a professional restoration that rendered the multiple large cracks almost entirely invisible? 

Regards,

Errol

Dear Birgit:

Because it's potentially confusing for other readers, I thought I would provide a link here to Peter's YouTube VIDEO on this topic.

Rose Canton: Flowers, fruit, insects, birds and fish and NO people

Rose Medallion: Alternating panels of people, fruits, flowers, insects, birds and fish

Rose Mandarin: Mainly figural in garden, terrace or indoor settings within borders of varying combinations of birds, flowers, fruit, insects and fish.

 I think these distinctions do apply but the overlap is huge. Peter in the video does show almost all pure examples of each pattern, but I think pure examples are rare.

Kind regards,

Errol

There are lots of examples of vases, teapots, celadon plates etc, which have  just birds flowers , with no panels, but maybe 'canton rose' would be a better name (than rose canton),

then if panelled,  the item is 'canton rose medallion', or  'canton rose mandarin', since all were decorated in the canton/guangzhou area. 

The more I look at the OP's vase the more it looks like an outlier , either by a slightly later date or where it was decorated (maybe Macau?) - there are no greek key borders which you often find on canton vases, and the panels seem larger and a different shape to many typical examples.