Collecting Nippon Antiques from Japan

"Let?s talk a little bit about the early Japanese things that said "Nippon" in the late eighteen hundreds, early nineteen hundreds. We move from Nippon to Japan, right after that but a couple of items. Something you might see, like this, might be back stamped "Nippon" "made in Nippon" or maybe it's back stamped "Japan" depending on exactly when it was made. However, these are what they call Lusterware. Let?s talk about Lusterware. This is a beautiful ceramic finish and it was very common and it was very collectible. This is a Lusterware vase and you'll see how, it's all hand painted, by the way, and it's just absolutely beautiful. You can see that the bottom is usually, well this one is stamped in the glaze and it says "made in Japan," that one actually says "Nippon." This one is from the glaze and it's hand painted and the way they fired this, it's with the glaze and then they painted over the top. You can see this part's hand painted and this part's hand painted. What's really fascinating about these, these are called wall pockets and it was very common in the twenties and thirties. You'd put these on your wall, kind of how they have the new Volkswagen now, you have a little place to put your flower. This was on the wall and you'd put your flowers in it, kind of cute huh? You'd hang it right up and put a little flower in there, so that's very cool. Now, one thing I noticed about this piece of Lusterware, is "uh oh, condition is everything." There's a crack. This pair of pockets, that's cute, a pair of pockets huh? This pair of pockets, if it was actually without that crack, this pair of pockets would probably be worth about one-hundred dollars. Cracked, pair of pockets, maybe thirty-five, if you're lucky. So you can see how much damage plays into a lot of this ware, this ceramic ware, this Lusterware and these Japanese imports. The reason I bring it up is because you can still find beautiful Lusterware at garage sale and this thing would probably retail, in the antique store, for quite a bit of money. I would say maybe twenty-five bucks, twenty bucks, if it's in perfect condition. So, that's why I recommend that you look at, these are what we call the "sleepers." Things that are "made in Japan," "Nippon," or "occupied Japan," that you can still find. They're wonderful and we're going to look at some more."