For centuries, the monarchs of Europe had imported the highly-prized and very expensive Asian porcelain but, in the first decade of the 18th Century, a true kaolin was discovered in the region known as Saxony, and for the first time, hard porcelain was able to be produced in Europe.  Thus was born the truly magnificent Meissen - or Dresden - porcelain, but the company could not keep their discovery secret for long and, by 1720, hard-paste porcelain was being produced in Vienna and, from there, the manufacture spread across Germany, the Netherlands, France, Russia, and into England until, by the turn of the 19th century, there were many excellent European manufacturers producing fine porcelain dinnerware and ornaments. For most of us, the ownership of an early Meissen piece is just a dream, but within the reach of most is the exquisite porcelain that has come to be collectively known as R.S. Prussia.

For a complete online history of R.S. Prussia, you can do no better than to visit the site of the International Association of R.S. Prussia Collectors, but for the average person buying on eBay, the most important thing is not to know how the porcelain came about,  but to be able to recognise whether an item is true R.S. Prussia or Prussia related, or whether they are being offered cheap (and often nasty) imported fakes.  While many antiques and vintage items are the subject of reproductions, few can claim to be the subject of such shameless and deliberate fakery as R.S. Prussia.   And what makes the problem worse is that these items often bear a mark that so closely resembles the Prussia and related marks that they can fool anyone not accustomed to seeing and handling the real thing.  I once watched an obvious fake sell at auction for about ten times its value!

If you are new to collecting, I can only suggest that you visit as many shows as you can, to familiarise yourself with the "feel" of R.S. Prussia pieces.  They invariably feel lighter than you think they should, and have that lovely translucent quality common to fine porcelain.  However, on eBay, you can't pick the item up and feel the quality, therefore it is essential  to educate yourself on the  many backstamps used on R.S. and related porcelain, learn the molds and familiarise yourself with the designs.  There really is no other way around the frauds being perpetrated, and sadly, sellers may well be acting in good faith when they offer a piece for sale, since they too can have been taken in.

How can this happen?  Well, since many of these fakes are turning up in antique malls and are being passed off at auctions, a seller may have bought the item in good faith and genuinely believe they have a genuine piece.  Alternatively, they may have found it amongst their grandparents' estate and wrongly assumed it was old.  I am a grandmother, but not everything I own is an antique! So, please don't assume that a seller is trying to cheat you.  We all make mistakes.  I know I certainly do, and I welcome comments from others trying to educate me.

However, sad to say, there are sellers who knowingly try to pass items off as genuine when they are not.  There are also those who sell "R.S. Prussia reproductions" and while this is both legal and moral, I have a problem with these items ever making their way onto the market because, over time, they will come to be assumed as genuine, thus perpetuating and increasing the difficulty or identifying the genuine article.

So, my final advice has to be, EDUCATE, EDUCATE, EDUCATE.  If you are a seller, be prepared to accept challenges to items you have for sale with good grace.  As sellers, we can all always benefit from advice from those who know more about their subject than the rest of us.  If you are a buyer, do your best to ascertain whether an item is genuinely R.S Prussia or related and try, where possible, to steer away from so-called reproductions.  It is better to own one nice, small but genuine piece than a host of supermarket-quality fakes.  And last of all, relax and enjoy.  If mistakes are made, we all learn from them.