All posts in Pottery Marks & Identification

Identifying a piece of pottery comes down to reading several different kinds of information packed into one small backstamp, plus the physical piece itself — and knowing what each element actually tells you turns a confusing jumble of words and symbols into a genuinely useful…

A single word on the bottom of a plate can narrow its manufacture date to a specific multi-decade window, thanks to a piece of 19th-century American trade law that most collectors rely on without ever having heard its name: the McKinley Tariff Act. The McKinley…

“Nippon” is simply the Japanese word for Japan, but on the bottom of a piece of porcelain, it functions as a remarkably precise dating tool — genuine Nippon marks were used for exactly thirty years, giving collectors one of the cleanest dating windows in the…

British pottery carries an additional layer of dating information beyond country-of-origin wording: a formal design registration system, unique to the United Kingdom, that recorded exactly when a specific design was legally registered. The Diamond-Shaped Registration Mark: 1842-1883 Between 1842 and 1883, the UK used a…

Reading a pottery backstamp well means working through several distinct pieces of information in a consistent order, rather than trying to absorb everything at once — a practical, repeatable process that gets faster the more pieces you work through. Step One: Note the Material Before…