Giving a historical background to an anonymous piece of hand painted porcelain, which means essentially establishing its provenance, is another way of looking at this form of art. A collector rarely finds adequate information on such artifacts! As a rule, older artifacts are not signed and almost never marked with a place of origin. A piece can be attributed to a certain person if it was kept within a family or if the seller can provide this information. Failing this, the best approximation about its provenance is based on the place of acquisition. Except for important well documented pieces that are auctioned, the majority of hand painted items are acquired by vendors in the territory where they live and possibly where the artist lived. It rarely happens that a piece painted, for instance, by Aunt Sarah in Winnipeg (Manitoba) is found in Modesto (California). Ideally the date, the name of the city, the name of the artist and the name of the person who commissioned a set could be gleaned from the pieces, but this is very rare! Some of the best documented cases are illustrated below.

1. CERTAINTIES - General Information and Background

Sometimes collectors are lucky enough to acquire items with an incredible amount of information.

1.1 Here the artist used well marked blanks, signed and dated all the pieces, indicated the place where they were painted and who commissioned the set.

1.2. The items come from a museum that deaccessioned them and provided pertinent information.

1.2.1 Unsigned chocolate set, hand painted by Sister Margaret McKewoan R.H.S.J., Kingston, Ontario, ca. 1890-1910, Noritake blank, provenance provided by a vendor in Forfar, Ontario. The archives of Hotel Dieu Hospital, Kingston Ontario, that deaccessioned the set, provided the cataloguing information to the vendor.

1.3 A relative or a friend knows several details about the creator of certain pieces.

1.3.1 Sometimes, these kinds of objects finds their resting place in the house of relatives. This plate is signed Inez Johnson/Jan. 1949, painted with blackcurrants on earthenware. Johnson was born c. 1907 and lived in Lethbridge, Alberta. Some information about her is found on the www.ancestry.com site (see: http://www.ancestry.ca/genealogy/1921census/alberta/inez-johnson_6012462). I was told by her daughter that Inez worked in the 1940s and 1950s in the local ceramics industry as a painter and glazer. She died in the 1990s. From her daughter, I acquired three plates painted by this artist. Inez was a very skilled painter, but her floral paintings were not done on porcelain blanks which must have been expensive, but on earthenware, probably available from the local manufacturers.

1.3.2 Plates painted on different German blanks, signed Rice 1911.The artist's name is Winnifred Rice. She was born in Fort Perry, Ontario. Her sister, Hanna had two sons, one of whom, named George, moved to Saskatoon with his mother in the late 1950's. He gifted several pieces to his friend, Mr. N. Lleung who put part of his collection on sale when downsizing.

1.4 The antique dealer or vendor, who knows the family or has additional documentation, can furnish a great deal of information about the artist, the background of the piece, even if the blank is not marked and the piece is not dated or badly identified.

1.4.1 Small plate, bearing the initials M.M.F. in red. The signed unmarked plate was sold by an antique dealer in the village of Shakespeare in Southern Ontario. The plate was painted in that village, during the first decade of the 20th century, by a very talented physician’s wife, Mrs. M.M. Faill, who was practicing her china painting abilities as an amateur. She left an impressive body of work, some 500 pieces which were sold by the estate and dispersed in the 1990s. The majority of the blanks were Limoges and the date of this plate is ca. 1910.

1.4.2 Three footed rose bowl, signed E.H. Abbott. on bottom. It bears the importer's mark on Bohemian porcelain, P.H.Leonard of New York City, c. 1890-1908, see: Robert E. Röntgen, Marks on German, Bohemian and Austrian Porcelain, p.107, fig. 663. In this case the mark is a valuable indication of the time frame when this piece was created. The vendor, from Shedden, Ontario, furnished an appraisal paper, dated Dec. 14, 1977 and signed by a Montreal appraiser. In this case the comments of the appraiser are highly inaccurate and further genealogical research is needed, but as the surname of the artist is fairly common, the genealogical research may be very extensive and fruitless.

1.5 The inscription on the bottom of the piece contains certain information about the artist(s), the date or the place of creation which permit further research in archives, the press, city directories or on the internet.

1.5.1 Art Nouveau style vase by Bernardaud & Co., green mark #2, 1914-1930s [see: Debby DuBay, Antique Limoges at Home (Atglen PA: Schiffer Publishing, 2002), p. 226], inscribed on bottom: S.M.R./Convent des SS MM de Jésus et de Marie/Valleyfield. The vase bears the initials of Soeur Marie Aristide (Delia Audet, 1872-1960), nun at Valleyfield between 1925 and 1931 [information gathered from Jacqueline Beaudry Dion, Jean-Pierre Dion and Mario Wilson book Peinture sur porcelaine dans le institutions au Québec 1890-1955, Saint Lambert, Québec, 1918, p.38]. I have found information concerning this nunnery on the site http://www.spiritualite2000.com/monasteres/monastere-de-valleyfield/, accessed 10 October 2015. The historian Lionel-Adolphe Groulx included information about the religious life of the parish in the booklet Petite histoire de Salaberry de Valleyfield (Montreal: Librairie Beauchemin Limitée, 1913).

1.5.2. The blank of this tray is by Reinhold Schlegelmilch Tillowits, see: Robert E. Röntgen: Marks on German, Bohemian, Austrian Porcelain 1710..., p. 91, mark 523/489, from 1904 to 1938. It is signed on bottom G. Julien/23, a well known artist from Ottawa, Ontario. Gratia Julien was a china painter and teacher of the art and was very active in the National Capital Region from the 1920s to the 1950s. In 1936 she exhibited her works with such well known painters as Henri Masson at the 4th Annual Exhibition of the Ottawa Arts Association (article published in The Ottawa Journal (Ottawa, Canada), Sunday, June 7, 1936, p. 21: www.newspapers.com/newspage/48203492/). The article offers this information: ''Miss Gratia Julien and Honore Beauchamp were winners of the popularity contest held in connection with the exhibition under auspices of the Confreres Artiste. Both -were exhibitors''. Precious information about Gratia Julien was given to me by one of her former students who is also a collector of her work.

1.5.3 Tea set inscribed on bottom Hand painted/Ann Skuse /Nov. 1978 (or 1979)/Victoria. B.C. The information was corroborated by researching the Yellow Pages of the Victoria B.C. City Directory. Ann Skuse used Chinese and Spanish blanks with some defects on the rim of the creamer and sugar bowl, covering the chips and cracks with gilding before decorating the set with pink rosehip flowers. The tea set was evidently painted for family use. Further genealogical research is needed.

2. SUPPOSITIONS - Dating Pieces When no Information is Available

When only the place of acquisition is known, there are still ways to determine the period when the piece was created such as comparing patterns or the variations on a mark when available.

2.1 Sometimes a set is composed of blanks produced by several manufacturers and bearing well documented marks. In such cases, the collector can presume that the painting was more or less contemporary with the time when that mark was in use and can pinpoint fairly correctly the period when the set was painted.

2.1.1 This set of 4 cups acquired in Toronto and signed M. Dean is marked as follows: Tressemann & Vogt, green mark #8, 1907-1919 (see: Debby DuBay, Antique Limoges t Home, p. 236) and La Porcelaine Limousine, green mark #3, 1905-1930 (see: Debby DuBay, Antique Limoges at home, p.232). From the marks, the cups can be roughly dated as being painted in the 1920s. Further research in genealogical sources might reveal a trove of information about the artist.

2.2 A well documented manufacturer's mark is stamped on one object and a slightly different less documented mark appears on another object. The pattern painted on both pieces is almost identical. It is probable that these items are contemporary and can be dated from the same period.

2.3 A specific decorative motive on an unmarked and undated piece is similar with the decoration on another one, also unmarked but signed and dated. Comparison of the two pieces as to style and design pattern can help determine the period when the undated piece was created.

2.3.1 Breakfast set, blanks signed E.H/1924, acquired in Ottawa, Ontario.

2.3.2 Creamer, no mark, signed G. Cumming, acquired in Barrie, Ontario. We could infer from the decoration that these pieces were painted in the 1920s, when this style of painting was prevalent.

These are only some of the possibilities to further the research in the background of hand painted porcelain. For all these pieces, further genealogical and historical research are required. In the case of an artist for whom the technical and artistic aspects of creation are mostly appreciated, it does not always seem important or relevant to establish the name of the artist, the place of creation or date. This identification becomes more important in later years, when the practical and decorative functionality of older painted porcelain gave way to the painter’s artistic and technical prowess, and when the quality of a creation resided in its aesthetic qualities.

For the collectors in general and for the institutional collectors in particular, both museums and art galleries, this kind of identification is vital. For collectors the beauty of a piece is generally paramount and beats any other consideration, but sometimes the impossibility to get any background data on an object can become an impediment for the discerning amateur of this type of art who wants to analyze acquisition in the broadest context that information allows. Nevertheless it is the choice of individual painters whether they wish to provide detailed information or simply a signature which is often hard to decipher.