old Asian grey crackle pitcher with 5 cups signed

I found this set in a local flea market- I tried to find something out about it- even had some of my friends scratching their heads. One of my friends said that when she looked at the symbols were Chinese but she thought the pottery was Japanese-she also said that the one Chinese symbol was "dawning" and the other was for "hill or mountain". As you can hopefully see in the photos the pitcher looks a bit different from the cups- either the pitcher was just "used more" or ended up "married " to the cups somewhere along the way. The pitcher has a differnt painted design on each side. These items are just as I found them- I made no attempt to clean the pitcher at all. The pitcher looks darker and has some mineral deposits (I guess) on the inside, the cups do not appear to have the same signs of use. Also the cups have a beveled unglazed edge on the bottom where the pitcher has a flat unglazed edge on the bottom. The pitcher is 7 1/4" tall 5 3/4" across at the bottom-cups are 3 3/4" tall and 2 3/4" across the top. The signature on the bottom of the pitcher is very hard to make out- I put a close photo of it but I don't know if it will be of much help. The signatures on the cups are better. There are no chips or cracks but there are some small glaze flaws- mostly around the bottom and a good sized "bubble pop". If there is anything I can give you a closer photo of- please let me know, I'll be glad to help if I can. Please consider "as is" all sales final- so resolve any questions you may have before bidding. So what you see is what you get, I really don't know anything about the origin- maybe you do! Thanks for looking, any comments or clues are ALWAYS welcome as I have found a wealth of information from my friends on Ebay.