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I Paid $18 For This Nippon Moriage Lamp

Check out this lamp I just found. It was sitting on a thrift store shelf with a $24 tag on it, and then the store had 25% off on top of that, so I walked out with it for $18. It’s a big yellow vase lamp with pink flowers painted all the way round and raised turquoise and gold beading up the sides, and I filmed it right there in the aisle because I couldn’t get over the price.

• Tag price: $24
• Discount that day: 25% off, so $6 off
• What I paid: $18
• My guess at what it’s worth: $125 to $165

The Moriage Is Why I Stopped At That Shelf

Now, the thing about moriage is that you can feel it before you know what it’s called. The decoration isn’t painted flat, it stands up off the porcelain in little ridges and beads. Gotheborg.com, the reference site collectors use for Chinese and Japanese porcelain, describes it as strings of clay applied to the piece “like icing on a cake,” and that’s about right, it looks like somebody piped it on. On this lamp the moriage runs in panels and dotted bands around the flowers, so the light catches all the bumps, and from across the room it looks a good deal more expensive than $18.

Run your hand over a painted vase and if the pattern stands up like piped frosting, that’s moriage, and the piece is worth flipping over to look for a mark.

The Nippon Mark Puts It Between 1891 And 1921

So I flipped it, and it’s marked Nippon. In the video I said that means pre-1900s, and that’s close but not quite it, the date that pops up on screen in my own clip, 1891 to 1921, is the right one. Back in 1891 the US McKinley Tariff Act said imports had to be marked with where they came from in English, so Japanese makers started stamping things “Nippon.” Then in 1921 US Customs stopped accepting “Nippon” and wanted “Japan” instead. So a Nippon mark lands a piece in that 30 year stretch, and a “Japan” or “Made in Japan” mark means it came later.

That makes this lamp somewhere between 100 and 135 years old, and it was on a thrift shelf next to the mugs. The one thing to keep in mind is the mark only dates the vase. The brass base, the socket and the cord could have been put on any time since, and the cord on this one is old, brown and stiff with an old style plug, so I’m not plugging it in next to the couch without having the wiring looked at first.

What $18 Could Turn Into

My number is $125 to $165, and I’m saying that out loud as a guess, not a price. A Nippon moriage lamp in good shape with a decent painting on it can land in that range, and it could land under it if there’s a chip, a crack in the beading, or the base turns out to be a later swap. So the honest answer is that I won’t know until the bidding starts.

I’m listing it on NikNax, the antiques and collectibles marketplace I started in October 2023, where sellers run auctions, Buy It Now listings and live sales, and I’m going to see what happens. If you’ve got a vase with that raised beading sitting on a shelf at home, flip it over and check the bottom before you decide it’s just a vase.