Pottery Marks and What They Tell Us

Mark showing pottery name, factory,
country, date, and pattern.

QUESTION: I go antiquing with a long-time friend. Inevitably, whether we’re browsing the tables at a local fleamarket or browsing in an antique shop or show, he always picks up a piece of pottery or porcelain and turns it over to see the mark. What do these marks say about the pieces besides who possibly made them? And are there any other marks from the making of the piece and what do they tell him?

ANSWER: An experienced collector of pottery can tell a lot about a piece’s origin by reading the manufacturers' marks on the bottom of each piece. These marks tell the pottery's name, its location, its company symbol, and often the pattern name or the name given to the body shape of the piece. 

Stamped mark

But there may also be other, less obvious, marks that indicate the method of production or factory flaws that show the level of quality control used by the firm. Collectors familiar with these signs can quickly distinguish between factory flaws and more serious indicators of damage and wear inflicted upon that same piece once it has left the  factory. Knowing the difference allows the experienced collector to purchase pottery with confidence.

While most manufacturer’s marks, which may he printed, incised, impressed, stamped, or applied as paper labels, usually contain the pottery’s name, initials, symbol and location---or some combination of these—some are rather sparse and may only contain a letter within a geometric shape or a crest. 

In the case of the larger firms, a pottery mark also has publicity value and shows the buyer that  a long-established company with a reputation to uphold has made a piece. Such clear name- marks include Wedgwood, Minton, Royal Crown Derby, Royal Doulton, and Royal Worcester in Britain and Bennington, McCoy, and Hull in the U.S.

Though these marks are one of the best and easiest ways to identify ceramics, the shear number of them makes it impossible to every mark. Additionally, many small firms either saw no reason to use marks or sometimes used marks that haven’t been identified because of the short life span and limited production of the company.

Metal stamped mark into clay

To the collector a pottery mark can also identify the manufacturer and help establish the approximate date of manufacture and in several cases the exact year of production, particularly in the case of 19th and 20th century wares from the leading firms which employed private dating systems. With the increasing use of ceramic marks in the 19th century, a large proportion of English and American pottery and porcelain can be accurately identified and often dated.

Pottery’s added marks to their wares in several ways. They could incise them into the soft clay before the piece air dried, in which the mark will show a slight ploughed-up effect. Potters often do this to handmade pieces. Some manufacturers of quantity pieces, such as Wedgwood, impressed a mark into the soft clay using a metal or clay stamp or seal. 

Many pottery manufacturers used painted marks—usually containing their name or initial—added over the glaze at the time of decoration. Some used stencils.

Engraved transfer printed mark

Lastly, most 19th-century pottery makers used printed marks transferred from engraved copper plates at the time of decoration, often in blue under the glaze when the main design is also underglaze blue.

Pottery marks weren’t always universally used. In 1890, President William McKinley introduced the McKinley Tariff Act that imposed tariffs on many imports, including pottery, so that American manufacturers could more easily sell their products. The Act required that all such imports show the name of country of manufacture, such as “England,” “Germany,” “Nippon,” or “France.” In 1921, an amendment to the Act required that the phrase “Made in” precede the country of origin, such as “Made in England” or “Made in Japan.” However, some foreign companies began using the phrase as early as 1898. This is a great way for collectors to date foreign-made pieces.

Underglaze marks

Beginning pottery collectors often miss marks or flaws from manufacturing and instead focus only on the maker’s mark. These marks give clues to the quality of the ceramic bodies each maker used. Potteries used different firing techniques for different grades of ceramics and the distinctive marks each technique left behind, once known, help to establish the quality of a piece.

To read more articles on antiques, please visit the Antiques Articles section of my Web site.  And to stay up to the minute on antiques and collectibles, please join the over 30,000 readers by following my free online magazine, #TheAntiquesAlmanac. Learn more about  world's fairs in the 2020 Summer Edition, online now. And to read daily posts about unique objects from the past and their histories, like the #Antiques and More Collection on Facebook.

Identification of Antique Pottery Begins with the Mark

QUESTION: I have what I believe to be an English ceramic plate with a mark that looks like a diamond with a bunch of letters and numbers in it. Can you tell me what that means?

ANSWER: The stamp on the back of your plate is known as a mark. Manufacturers of English pottery used this particular design between 1842 and 1883. The letters and numbers indicate the dates of the plate’s design registration with the British patent office. You can easily decipher this alpha-numeric code by checking the chart found on the Phoenix Masonry Web site or in Kovels' New Dictionary of Marks - Pottery & Porcelain: 1850 to the Present by Ralph and Terry Kovel (Crown Publishers, New York).

Pottery makers replaced this diamond-shaped registry mark with a sequential numbering system prefaced by the abbreviation Rd. No.  in 1884. Over the years, they modified the arrangement of the numbers several times, so it can be confusing. If you need specific information, you can contact the British Designs Registry Patent Office for dates registered in and after 1909 and the British Public Record Office for dates registered prior to 1909.



Sometimes, pottery and porcelain makers used word indications that spelled out the date. If the mark shows the country of origin, this means the piece dates after 1891, according to the U.S.  McKinley Tariff Law.

Often manufacturers worldwide employed words to describe their wares. These usually had start and end dates, making it easy to figure out the approximate date of a piece. For instance, the term "Nippon,” the Japanese name for Japan, indicates that piece of Japanese porcelain dates from 1891 to 1921 while "Made in Occupied Japan" shows that the piece dates from  1945 to 1952. "Semi-vitreous" means the piece appeared on the market after 1901 while "bone china" indicates that the piece dates generally from the 20th century.  The phrase "oven-proof' appeared on pottery and china after 1933, but "dishwasher proof ” didn’t appear until after 1955. Sometimes a location, such as "East Germany" can indicate a time period, which in this case extends from 1949 to1990.

If a piece of pottery or porcelain has a mark showing a design and/or maker’s name, this information may also help to date it. You’ll find loads of resources, both in print and online, to help you identify early English, European, and Asian pottery and porcelain marks.

In the United States, makers stamped patent numbers on the backs and bottoms of their pottery pieces. A patent number represents the very earliest an article could have been produced. For example, a patent number of 16,388 indicates the piece appeared after Jan. 1, 1857 but prior to Jan. 1, 1858. Therefore, it dates from 1857, the year of its patent registration. Should you discover several sequential patent number sets on one piece, you should look up the final set on a patent date chart to date the piece.

Marks on furniture, glass, and silver are another story. When a maker uses his name or logo, you may have enough information to track the date of manufacture. Often during the course of the run of a piece, the maker will use different names. Quimper pottery is a good example. As the companies consolidated the marks changed.

To read more articles on antiques, please visit the Antiques Articles section of my Web site.  And to stay up to the minute on antiques and collectibles, please join the over 30,000 readers by following my free online magazine, #TheAntiquesAlmanac. Learn more about "Coffee--The Brew of Life" in the 2023 Summer Edition, online now. And to read daily posts about unique objects from the past and their histories, like the #Antiques and More Collection on Facebook.

Samples or Toys?—That is the Question

QUESTION:  Can you tell me anything about these two small pieces of Chippendale furniture?
Could they have been for little girls to play with?

ANSWER: Your pieces of furniture seem too detailed and too small for say a 6-8-year-old girl to play with. But it’s quite possible that they were samples that a salesmen carried with them to show shopkeepers or rural customers in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

A salesman would leave items like these in a shop to use as display pieces. General stores needed to carry a lot of items and didn’t have room for full-sized furniture. This finely made armchair and birdcage table, made in the Chippendale style, would have given customers a good idea of their detailing and construction.

Itinerant sales representatives would loan miniatures of their company’s products with country store owners to promote their wares. A shop owner might receive a sample for display if they had enough sales of particular items to warrant it. Most of these samples were 1/4- to 1/3-scale models and were very expensive to make. Therefore, companies only made a small quantity of each.

A salesman sample was in essence a complete, and often working, scale model. Companies used them especially to show off large heavy items like ice boxes, washing machines, furniture, and the like. Each featured the same materials and hardware as the original, only in scaled-down size.

A customer could study the sample, and if he or she wanted to purchase it, they’d give the store owner a deposit, and the owner would order the item from the manufacturer by mail or telegram. The customer would pay the balance of the price when they picked up the item. People who lived in the vast Midwest often had to travel long distances to towns to do their special shopping. Usually, they shopped for many of their needs from catalogs. And sometimes salesmen would stop by to show them samples of their wares. This was especially true if they sold farm machinery, cooking stoves, or washers.

Samples of mechanical items like cooking stoves, for example, featured authentic nickle plating and functional fireboxes, plus a manufacturer’s nameplate. These usually distinguish salesman samples from toys. Toys of the same mechanical items, often made in Germany, were as finely detailed as the samples but had nameplates or other markings from the toy manufacturer. Or none at all which makes distinguishing them from salesman samples more difficult.

Some collectors argue that a salesman sample has to have a case or box that the salesman would have carried it in on his rounds. However, most salesman samples didn’t have cases.

There are two types of salesman's samples on the market today—ones that worked and ones that didn’t. Obviously, as technology progressed through the 1880s and 90s, and through the turn of the century, machines became more prevalent and large ones required salesman samples. Cooking stoves could weigh in at 500+ pounds and took up too much room in shops to be practical. In fact, many homeowners bought them directly from the manufacturer. But no matter if they worked or not, the goal of all salesman's samples was to sell a product. Those salesman's samples that actually worked were more common before 1920. Using a scaled-down sample of their weighty product was a very cost-effective way for the machinery companies to do business.

However, the differences between salesman samples and toys aren't always so obvious. Children’s toy furniture, for example, was smaller than salesman samples and usually not nearly as well made. The samples were the real thing in a reduced size, so they used all the same woods and hardware. Fine pieces like this armchair and table would have possibly been commissioned by a wealthy family and would have been signed by the maker. Salesman samples, on the other hand, had to look as good or better than the actual piece of furniture because people didn't change furniture as often as they do today, so they bought quality pieces that would last.

It’s important for collectors of salesman samples to be wary of imitations. Prices for them can reach astronomical amounts mostly because sellers overprice toys which they sell as salesman samples. And as with all antiques, it’s buyer beware.