News — News

A customer recently asked me about an item seen on eBay - a supposedly 1st Sino-Japanese War (1895) commemorative bronze tray. It sounded a bit dodgy, and then I saw the pictures...

Well, there are a number of things wrong with this. I've cut out the seller's name - it's one of those sellers based in Mainland China who sells everything from antique vases to random trinkets. Usually, when it's a seller who sells everything and they're all a few hundred dollars fixed and are supposedly 200 years old.... it's not right. The Chinese antique market is...

The search function on the site has been a bit rubbish - mostly because the default search gives you everything, including a lot of old items that were sold as well as not having functionalities like sorting the search results. I just implemented a new search feature that gives you a lot more options with regards to what you are looking for - please let me know how it works and if you like it. Thanks again for all your support!

There are a lot of events to keep track of when it comes to these cups - they often reference various events and years. This is meant to be a handy guide to the major events that happened. We take 1895 as the starting point - almost all the items come from 1895 or later. There are exceptions, but they are rare. Here I only list the major conflicts - there are smaller incidents, events, and what not, but those are too numerous to list one by one.

1894-95: First Sino Japanese War 日清戦争. The fighting mostly...

One of the things that annoy me is when I find cups that are otherwise really nice, but through years of neglect and poor preservation, have ended up in a horrible state. This cup above is one such example, and it pains me because you can still see traces of the cup underneath - a soldier rowing his own boat up a river, symbolizing, I think, a hardworking soldier. That, and also because I've sold a cup like this before almost ten years ago

They're obviously not identical, but it's the same theme, and...

There is another type of source for these cups - officially given cups. These are cups that are given to individuals from the Japanese government for various reasons, and usually in lieu of some other kind of decoration. Most common among these are cups given for various kinds of charitable donations, including donations to the government for war efforts and other kinds of civilian support for any military action. For example, in a book of all documents about awards, medals, and orders from the Decorations Bureau, which oversees all grants of orders, medals, etc, there is a whole chapter devoted to...