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A picture of the vase and the mark would help.
Linda C

I dont' have a good picture of the vase, here's the link directly, let's hope this works

I suggest you find the link to discussions one ht site below and ask your question there....but you should be prepared with a good picture of your vase. There will be questions about the shape any decoration, what the bottom looks like etc.
Linda C

Here is a link that might be useful: Gothenborg

Those marks don't look like Japanese or Chinese characters or the Korean alphabet. I think Lindac is correct--you will have to find a site where there are people who are very familiar with Chinese/Japanese/Korean pottery who might know those marks or how to interpret them. Pictures of the vase will most likely be necessary, as well, so that people can see the style of the vase, the color and the glaze.

Thought I'd post the pics of the vase finally in case anyone knew. :)

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The red mark is a chop mark...likely Chinese and that's your clue. Get a better camera to take a better picture of that red mark.
Perhaps it's not so old, made in shanghai....

Those pics were taken with a macro lense. It's the best I can do. Perhaps playing around with different colors might make it stand out more (the red mark) but other than that, there's no help for it unfortunately. Just worn out too much to really make out :(

hi,im trying to find out some info about these items, they were passed on to me from my grandfather a few years ago and i would realy love to know what age and origin they are...thanks in advance

Here is a link that might be useful: pictures of my items! brown pottery

They are actually Japanese or Chinese characters. They mean "correct" (as in morally right or proper) "forest/woods"

The hanko/chop mark isn't legible. They both use the same characters, but the two character combination doesn't "read" as a word in Japanese, so I would say it's Chinese.

The writings are both Chinese and Japanese. It is a Japanese trademark.

Multiple-character combinations do represent "one" word in Japanese. Try google "write Woods in Japanese", "write Forest in Japanese", or "write bright in Japanese"..etc.

Uh... not exactly. Some characters "stand alone", and some characters are always combined to form a single word... in Japanese that is. It's also true that a single character may have several different pronunciations depending on how they are used in conjunction with other characters. Ie., the first character could be read as "sei", "shou", "tada" (as in tadashii), or "masa". The second character can be read as "shin" or "mori".

Following the rules of grammar, there is no combination of these two characters, separate or together that form an actual word or phrase in Japanese.

To take it a step further, I did a quick search for 正森 and all results returned where in Chinese. The meaning of the characters is the same in either language, but I think it is safe to say that you have a Chinese piece there. :-)

Using a Chinese dictionary, 正森 reads in Chinese as "Zhengsen". You might find additional information by searching for zhengsen ceramics online.

Here is a link that might be useful: Google search for 正森

Sorry... I guess this forum doesn't support kanji/characters, and my morning coffee hasn't kicked in yet. lol

That should have read "Zhenglin", not "-sen". "rin" or "hayashi", not "shin" or "mori" on the second character. The difference? One less "tree" on top. :-)

Here is a link that might be useful: Google search