If you’ve got a piece of pottery you’ve discovered and are interested in finding out more about it then you’re probably wondering how to do it! Well, here are a few options to help you get started:
- You could try having a looking through the Perfect Pieces Online Pottery Marks Guide – click here;
- If you have no luck there then have a look through some of the books available:
We’ve found these to be quite comprehensive and very worthwhile.
- If you’re still none the wiser then try contacting your local auction house. These will often have valuation days where you can take your item along and have someone look over it, they may be able to help.
If you do manage to find out what you’re looking for then that’s great – let us know how you did it & if you have any tips for our other readers.
People are becoming more and more interested in finding out about the items of pottery and porcelain they have in their homes today. Some are interested to see if it has any value others just want to know the history of an item that may have been in their family for some time. For these reasons we started to collate all the pottery marks we had images of and created the Perfect Pieces Pottery Marks Guide.
The Perfect Pieces Pottery Marks Guide is currently a free to use online guide made up of photographs of real pottery marks from objects we have sold over the years. Viewing an actual photograph example of a pottery mark allows you to see any tiny variations or imperfections that pottery marks may have had – things that are hand-made are rarely what people class as perfect!
It is by no means complete and we are adding to it all the time, so do feel free to email us any pottery marks you have on items that we don’t. If they fit within one of our pottery collections we’ll be sure to add the mark to our database with a credit to you.
To visit our Pottery Marks Guide, please – click here.
If you’re trying to identify an object and still have no look after looking through our Pottery Marks Guide then why not try flicking through one of the Pottery Marks Books that are currently on the market. We have worked with several of these including the Encyclopaedia of British Pottery and Porcelain Marks by Geoffrey A. Godden
and can certainly recommend them.
Click Here To See A Selection of Pottery Mark Books
I get many emails regarding the best books available to identify British pottery marks, and the kinds of guides that are good for taking with you when out hunting for items, so I thought I would run through some of the pottery mark books that are out there.
One of the main books available is the Encyclopaedia of British Pottery and Porcelain Marks by Geoffrey Godden. This is a hard back, very thick and very heavy book – however it is comprehensive and if you have lots of pottery marks you’re wanting to identify then it’s definitely worth having at home.
If you’re looking for a guide you can carry around, for instance if you want to take it with you when you visit antique fairs, antique centres or car boots then you can’t go wrong with either Geoffrey Godden’s New Handbook of British Pottery and Porcelain Marks or the Miller’s Pottery and Porcelain Marks guide. These are both small enough not to weigh you down but should provide you with all the basic information you might need to check out any finds!
And finally, if you’re a collector of Studio Pottery then the British Studio Potters’ Mark book by by Eric Yates-Owen and Robert Fournier is for you. This is a hardback book with many pages (672 in total!) so once again is very heavy but is very comprehensive and always worth a space on any book shelf.
Good luck with any identifying you’re trying to do and don’t foget if you get stuck with a particular pottery mark then why not post a message here to see if any of our other readers can help you!
