El Portal Porcelana

Another example of an odd mark (at right) that may or may not have been intended to deceive has been found on a pair of miniature owls in the "Lladró style." The mark on these examples is somewhat primitive and bears a loose resemblance to the capital letters N-A-O, though it bears no resemblance at all to the refined mark of a genuine NAO. (Compare this mark to genuine examples found on the
NAO marks page).

Other clues to the non-Spanish origin of this miniature pair can also be seen in the base, which is mostly glazed; genuine Lladró products - and, indeed, most contemporary Spanish porcelain figurines of whatever manufacturer - nearly always have a completely unglazed base. (They also usually have a flatter base than the one pictured here.) The very large steam escape hole in the bottom of these pieces is also a giveaway. NAO and other Lladró products nearly always have a very subtle steam escape hole in the base, not much bigger than the sharpened tip of a pencil, and, although I have occasionally seen much larger holes in a NAO, I've never seen them take up as much of the proportions of the base as the holes do on these two examples. The bases of these indicate, therefore, that, though they attempt to imitate the Spanish style, chances are they weren't even made in Spain. The coarseness in the mark's lettering may be attributable to an attempt to imitate a Western alphabet by someone unfamiliar with it, which could indicate an origin somewhere in Asia. (In fact, at least one shipment of forged core collection Lladró that I know of has already been traced to a factory in China.)

Well, the point of all this is, of course, that the global market fanned by online auctions has become a commercial version of the American "wild frontier," so collectors are advised to be cautious in assessing the manufacturing origin of figurines with "funny marks."