Fake & Repro Marks:

[1] : RPM (Germany)

The real manufacturer of these items is the 'Royal Porzellan G.m.b.H.' and against the indication in the name they never had any royal connection at all. The company history at first glance seems confusing: the former proprietor of the 'Bauer & Lehmann' company in Kahla (Thuringia) with the name of Klaus Cutik founded his own factory, the 'Porzellanmanufaktur Klaus Cutik' in Küps (Bavaria) in 1960. His factory mainly produced gifts and souvenirs until it on January 1st 1973 merged into the newly-founded 'Royal Porzellan G.m.b.H.' but it remains uncertain if there actually were two companies or the first transformed into the second. Anyway, the new company also specialized on gifts and souvenirs but also made dolls, doll heads and a large variety of reproductions. Of course they used a large variety of marks, many of which were unidentified for quite some time.

This mark is really annoying because it frequently pops up and is constantly misrepresented; each time someone tears down the made-up story of the manufacturer supposedly behind these items the same stuff pops up with stories of the next defunct factory that apparently made them. No matter how good the stories are, no matter how good the pics are ... these items are modern stuff.

I laughed most at the last two marks which were found on the back of transfer-decorated and framed porcelain tiles; the first joke were the frames, pre-aged jobs that can be ordered in large numbers via a dealer in Poland. Anyway, these complete 'original pieces of art' were claimed to have been made long before the obviously silk-screened transfers were invented and the requirement of marking with the country of origin had been set up. Oh ... and don't forget that at the time these 'originals' apparently were conceived, the country later known as 'Germany' did not even exist ;-)