A "Duan" inkstone made from "Zhejiang" stone and exported from "She" to Guangdong province
How to identify them:

After you look at all the picture, we will show you.

The inkstone on the left for sure looks like an old or used Duan inkstone. Black ink around the inkstone, a rubbing or some dealer even claim it's famous Duan markings of Banana Leaf white. The darker out line around the rubbing area even seems like another kind of Duan stone marking  Fire Burning mark.

On the back, it's even engraved with the year of Qianlong and the person who collected the stone,
sure is very convincing. The style of this fake Duan inkstone is copied from historical books. So carving style cannot tell very much and help anyone to identify these are fake Duan antique inkstones. Anyhow if you just buy it as a display piece, it sure does not really matter too much as long as you did not pay a fortune for it.

Nowdays, not that many people study inkstones, this is why these purple She stones can be faked into the market. Northern Song Chinese art master and inkstone collector Mi Fu (1052-1107) even wrote about these She purple stones, he first wrote about She Zhou (now Hui Zhou) the exquisit She inkstones, then he detailed "However for those who consider strangeness as a superior quality there are also stones of a red and purple colour, without any markings, and but few flaws. They are glossy like datewood. The local people use them for making things like incense-burners. Also they cut them into the shape of inkslabs. They repel the ink, so that, during the rubbing, the stone is not mixed with the ink. In course of time they grow slippery, and then can no longer be rubbed!"

  2) The marking of Banana White (on the left lower part of stone) -- the very tender and light color patch that looks like a large leave is very delicately in the stone.

  3) The Fire Burning mark is the more purple marking surround the Banana White marking, also on this stone, there is another Fire Burning mark cross from the bottom to the top.

  4) The Golden marks in small line pieces cross the stone from the lower left to the top right are called Ice Cracking marks, they really look like the ice on a pound cracked. If in patches, then it's called Fish Brain Jelly.

  5) The Orange belt that's like a rainbow is called Colored Jade Belt, same name used in She inkstone.

Carving Style: Key in helping you identify cheap imitations from Genuine Duan inkstones:

Very fine and detailed. Duan carvers takes the inkstone as a small shrunk canvas, all the figures and creatures are depicted as if they were shrunk to fit into the small canvas too. Very different from She carving which always have very realistic cardigans of the flowers and animals. She inkstone comes out more powerful and primitive. Whole Duan carvings are more delicate and fairy land pictures of our world! They are very very fine.

Though we only showed two dragon inkstones here, their flower and bird carving are just the same, small tiny but very very detailed and fine carvings.

This stone again showed markings of Ice Cracking mark, Fire Burning mark, and Banana White mark. Took us --- She inkstones collector's a long time to adjust to accepting the Duan stone markings. In She inkstone, Ice Cracking marks are really identified as Hair line cracks, stone veins and considered flaws in She insktone. But the formation of these golden lines are originally from cracks in the stone, after long long time (millions of years), mineral deposits filled up the cracks, formed these beautiful markings. 

1) Lao Kang   ---- Da Xi mine and Shui Gui mine are considered Lao Kang (Old Mine) quarries. Quality good Duan stone from these two mines (now the two mines are already connected together) are only about 30 pieces.

Mud content in these stones are much higher than others, their tapping sound is not crisp metallic sound, rather it's Wooden sound.This is one of the way identifying Lao Kang Duan inkstone.

1) The next precious Duan inkstone is from Kang Zi Yan mine. This mine has been exploited since Song dynasty.

Beautiful markings can be seen from these stones like Banana White, Fish Brain Jelly, Blue flower, Fire Burning, ... Also beautiful eyes, characterized by greenish eye with black eye dots in the middle.

2) Then it's Ma Zi Mine, Sone Mine, Cherry Blossom Mine. These are more common Duan inkstones, we imported some of these for teachers and students to use. They are very very smooth, grind ink very well and less expensive than She inkstone. Even less expensive than Old Mine Da Guyun inkstone.

3) Old Mine Dragon's Tail inkstone is like the Lao Kang She inkstone, very rare collector's inkstones. Large pieces with beautiful marking commands hundreds and thousands of dollars.