Sources & Methodology
This page explains how an entry in The Mark Index is put together, so you can judge how much weight to give it.
What counts as a source
In rough order of weight: museum and archive records, company histories and archives, collectors’ society and club references, historical societies, university and library research guides, catalogs from established auction houses, and long-running collector reference sites. Sites that exist mainly to sell appraisals, and pages that repeat other pages without citing anything, are used only to cross-check, never as the main source.
The fields in an entry
| Field | What it means |
|---|---|
| Transcription | The mark’s wording and line breaks, as a source quotes or shows it. Italics mark a source’s description instead of a quote. |
| Method | How the mark was made: impressed, incised, stamped in ink, printed backstamp, stenciled, raised or molded, die-struck, engraved, or paper label. Blank if no source says. |
| Shape and symbols | The outline of the mark (oval, circle, shield, banner, script and so on) and any pictures in it (crown, anchor, eagle, wing…). |
| Dates | The years the mark was used, as sources give them. “c.” means approximately. |
| Sources agree / partly disagree | “Sources agree” means at least two sources match on the key dates. “Sources partly disagree” means they differ, and the entry explains how. |
How the Finder matches
The Finder compares what you type against the wording of every mark and the maker’s names. It ignores punctuation and accents, accepts partial words, and tolerates small misspellings, because worn marks are hard to read. The symbol, shape and method filters use the fields above, so a mark whose method no source records won’t appear when you filter by method.
Limits
Many makers used marks that no reference has fully dated, and small potteries and jewelry firms often went unrecorded. Not finding a mark here doesn’t mean a piece is unimportant or fake. It may mean the maker isn’t in the index yet.