How to Identify Fake RS Prussia Porcelain

February 29, 2020

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Video Transcription: Hi, this is Jennifer here with City Farmhouse Antiques and I am here with this week's Find of the Week. This week want to show you this R.S. Prussia Tea Set or Coffee Set...or is it? This week, I want you to be the judge and I am putting you to the test this week. Here is the actual coffee pot and you can see that the picture transfer is fairly thick. You can see there the top of the teapot, the finial, there is the creamer. You can see the creamer there. I want you to look closely at the paint. I want you to see how the base of the finial looks and see how the texture looks on the cobalt blue paint. You see the sheen and that bumpy, uneven texture? You see how sloppy it looks here on the edges how the paint overlaps and comes up over onto the white handles. Here is another good example there. You can see how the paint overlaps onto the handle. These are the cups that come with the set. You can see how great the gold gild is and how thick the transfer is. I want you to look at another cup. There you can see there is a little paint that spilled over onto the handle. Here, look at the plates. It is easy to see the texture of the paint on the plates. The texture looks uneven in areas. A little darker in areas and a little lighter in areas where there is white showing through. Now we are having noise from the peanut gallery (dogs in the shop barking) There you see thickening of the paint where it looks uneven. Here is the logo. Let's see if I can get a better look at the maker's mark for you. So, my question to you this morning is.....Is this a real piece of RS Prussia? Here is another close up of the handle. Is this authentic RS Prussia? That is my question to you. So, there are so many reproductions today it can be very hard to tell if you have a real piece of RS Prussia. Looking at the maker's mark you can take a good look at this one. There are tons of maker's marks that are reproductions. You can see how even on the feet of this piece there is just a dollop of gold paint on the edge of the foot. The paint doesn't even cover the entire foot of the piece. I am sure by now you can tell by the way I am talking that this is a fake piece of RS Prussia. These are all fake pieces. This set was actually sold to me as real. It is not. You can take one look at the set and know that by the marksmanship and art work on these pieces they are not real. You would never see paint that looks like this. It looks like a child has painted these pieces. My point is...it is easy to get caught up in all the fake marks when looking at antique porcelain like RS Prussia so it is important to look at the piece or set in its entirety. Look at the whole piece to identify red flags in quality. Always look at the quality of a piece. Here you can tell just by the paint, the quality of the paint, and the way these pieces were painted this set is a fake. Another red flag is this thick transfer. There is no wear to this piece. As far as the maker's mark there are many fake marks for RS Prussia. A real maker's mark will have a red star, and a red outline to the wreath with green leaves. Some of the fake marks will have really thick red lines making them appear sloppy. If a piece is sloppy, doesn't look clean, doesn't look painted well, the maker's mark looks sloppy those are all going to be really big red flags that you are not looking at an authentic piece. There are some maker's marks that are authentic that are entirely green so I urge you to look at a full list of authentic and fake RS Prussia marks at the rsprussia.com website. That is a really good resource. I wanted to give you some tips today so you have a better idea of what you are looking at if you are going to a flea market or somewhere where they are marketing RS Prussia pieces you can better identify real ones. Another real good way to tell is look at how thick these pieces are. These are real thick and clunky almost as if they were pottery not porcelain. What I want to do now is show you the real thing. If you haven't looked at real pieces, I urge you to put your hands on a few real pieces of RS Prussia and that is going to give you a better idea when you are looking at fakes. Your real porcelain is going to be finer. Here is a piece here. Know your molds for RS Prussia, but if you don't these are at least some good tips at being able to identify some fake pieces. You can see how fine and intricate this is and detailed the piece is. The porcelain is very thin and very fragile. You can see a different maker's mark with the red, the red star, and the green leaves with the very fine red outline surrounding those leaves which I don't think you can see in this picture. This is a set of small bowls and this is the large bowl. There you can see the difference, I'm hoping you can, in the video, see how fine and thin it is and of course the maker's mark matches the other pieces. So, I hope these tips were helpful. Be sure and check out our website at www.cityfarmhouseantiques.com where we have more than just antiques and be sure to give us a like on Facebook.