Free Maker’s Mark Databases: A Link-Checked Directory

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More than 2,000 potteries of Stoke-on-Trent and North Staffordshire, browsable by name, by date of first operation and by factory location, alongside company histories and pages on marks.

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Steve Birks, The Potteries website.

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Company histories of UK potters and pottery manufacturers from 1900 to 2010, with pages on styles, articles and a glossary.

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Michael Perry, independent researcher.

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Ming and Qing reign marks reign by reign, later Chinese marks, cyclical dates, artists' marks and a section on Japanese marks. Part of a site of more than 1,500 open-access pages.

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Jan-Erik Nilsson.

The reference pages are free. The site's discussion board is a paid membership.

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Free PDF booklets of Nippon-era backstamps: the Morimura Company's marks, other makers' marks, newly found marks, dinnerware, and dolls and playthings. Marks keep the numbers Joan Van Patten assigned in her books.

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International Nippon Collectors Club (INCC), founded in 1982.

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A searchable dictionary of the marks, signatures and biographies of American studio potters and ceramic artists from the mid-20th century to today. Search by mark or signature, by artist, or browse the artist index.

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The Marks Project, Inc.

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The 1886 London edition of William Chaffers' marks book, scanned in full. Strong on older European factories. As with any 19th-century reference, check its dates against a modern source.

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Internet Archive; digitized from a Smithsonian Libraries copy.

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Full-text issues of the annual journal Ceramics in America, 2001 to 2025: research articles on potters, factories and the wares used in North America.

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The Chipstone Foundation, Milwaukee.

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More than 12,000 silver marks on over 1,200 pages: American makers and their date codes (Gorham, Tiffany, Kirk, Whiting and others), British hallmarks, world hallmarks by country, and silverplate marks. Has a bibliography of its sources.

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Independent site; the operator isn't named on its pages.

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Hallmark tables country by country, strong on Continental Europe (Italy, France, Germany, Austria-Hungary, Scandinavia and more), plus silverplate marks and silversmith pages.

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Independent site built around a private collection of antique silver; the owner isn't named on its home page.

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More than 8,000 biographies of Edinburgh gold and silversmiths from the 12th century on, with illustrations of makers' marks, plus Glasgow Assay Office records (1819 to 1964) and provincial Scottish makers. Search by mark, maker or keyword.

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Edinburgh Assay Office (formerly hosted by the Scottish Goldsmiths Trust).

Searching needs a free account (name, email and password). The office has no archivist and doesn't answer individual questions.

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The London office's own guide to tracing a UK hallmark: the sponsor's mark, the metal-standard mark, the assay office mark and the date letter, plus the commemorative and duty marks that can help date a piece.

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The Goldsmiths' Company Assay Office, London.

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A full scan of Wilfred Cripps' classic on English silver and its makers and marks, as the subject stood in 1899.

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Internet Archive; digitized from a University of California Libraries copy.

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The official site of the Convention on the Control and Marking of Articles of Precious Metals, the treaty signed in Vienna in 1972. Explains how the convention works and lists its member countries.

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The Convention's Standing Committee and Secretariat.

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The standard free guide to dating American bottles by how they were made: finishes, bases, seams, colors and shapes, with a step-by-step dating key. Its Makers Marks section hosts the Bottle Research Group's Encyclopedia of Manufacturers Marks on Glass Containers.

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Bill Lindsey, retired Bureau of Land Management specialist, on the Society for Historical Archaeology's server.

Moved to a new host. Old sha.org/bottle/ links now fail; see the address table below.

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Marks, logos and emblems of American glass factories as seen on bottles, fruit jars, insulators and tableware, with company histories and date ranges. The mark list builds on Julian Toulouse's 1971 Bottle Makers and Their Marks and later research.

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David Whitten, glass collector, since 2004.

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Research guides arranged by glass company, type of glass, region, technique and artist. Each guide points to the books, articles and archives on that subject.

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The Rakow Research Library, Corning Museum of Glass.

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Furniture makers and allied tradespeople in Britain and Ireland over 400 years: where they worked, what they made, materials and commissions. Search people, places, materials and styles.

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The Furniture History Society.

Moved from bifmo.history.ac.uk. Old links redirect to the new site, but deep links may not reach the same page.

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Primary-source records on more than 100,000 artisans in 127 trades in the American South before 1861, cabinetmakers among them. Entries come from newspapers, city directories, court and probate records and private papers.

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Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts (MESDA), Winston-Salem, North Carolina.

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A database of furniture made in Boston from 1630 to 1930, from collections in Massachusetts and beyond. Browse by object type, style and maker.

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Winterthur Museum, Garden and Library.

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Full-text issues of the annual journal American Furniture, 1993 to 2024: research on cabinetmakers, shops and regional furniture.

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The Chipstone Foundation, Milwaukee.

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An A to Z guide to costume jewelry signatures and companies, with photos, histories and catalog material shared by collectors and dealers since 1997.

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Costume Jewelry Collectors Int'l (CJCI). Created by Dotty Stringfield with jewelry historian Pat Seal on IllusionJewels.com.

Moved from IllusionJewels.com in 2019; see the address table below.

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The 1896 Jewelers' Circular book of trademarks used in the jewelry and related trades, scanned in full.

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Internet Archive; from the GIA Library collection.

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Free guide pages on British and Irish pewter marks: touch marks, pseudo-hallmarks, quality marks, labels and catalog numbers, plus verification, capacity and ownership marks.

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The Pewter Society, founded in 1918.

The Society's Database of Pewterers (about 20,000 pewterers and 12,000 marks) is for members only. The guide pages are open to all.

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How American pewterers marked their work, with touch marks, hallmarks and labels explained, and the standard printed references for American marks.

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Pewter Collectors Club of America, Inc.

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Essays and comparison galleries for datable artifact types: historic ceramics ware by ware, table glass, small finds and pre-contact ceramics. Written for archaeologists but useful to anyone.

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Maryland Archaeological Conservation Laboratory, Jefferson Patterson Park and Museum.

Moved from jefpat.org; see the address table below.

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A digital type collection of historical ceramics, built largely from the museum's research on Spanish colonial sites, with an introduction to ceramic identification, a glossary, and search and browse by type. Also in Spanish.

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Historical Archaeology program, Florida Museum of Natural History.

Moved from /histarch/gallery_types/; see the address table below.

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More than 1.3 million objects. Ceramic and silver records often have a Marks and inscriptions field that transcribes the mark and says how it was applied.

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Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

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The museum's catalog of objects, searchable by maker, material, place and date, with photographs for many records.

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The British Museum, London.

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Catalog records for the Metropolitan Museum's collection, including the American Wing and European decorative arts, searchable by maker and filterable by material and date.

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The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

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One search across more than 18.7 million records of objects, archives and library materials from Smithsonian museums.

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Smithsonian Institution.

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Millions of digitized library books. Older public-domain mark books, trade directories and catalogs can be read in full; newer books are searchable by keyword only.

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HathiTrust, a partnership of research libraries.

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Scanned books, trade catalogs and directories, including the public-domain mark books listed on this page, plus the Wayback Machine for websites that have gone.

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Internet Archive, a nonprofit library.

Public-domain books read without an account. Some in-copyright books are loan-only and need a free account.

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The official search of US federal trademark applications and registrations, live and dead. A record names the owner and gives the dates the owner claimed for first use, which can date a mark.

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United States Patent and Trademark Office.

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Find details of UK trade marks by word, phrase or image, from the Intellectual Property Office.

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UK Intellectual Property Office.

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How British designs were registered, what the registers contain, and how to use a diamond registration mark (1842 to 1883) or a design number to find the original record.

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The National Archives, Kew.

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One search across trademark records from many national and international registers, about 77 million records from 89 data sources, with search by name or by logo image.

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World Intellectual Property Organization.

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Full text of patents from around the world. Type the number from a PAT. or PATENTED mark to see who held it and when it was granted.

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Google.