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.
Well Christmas is over for another year there’s just New Year now! So, like most people you’ve probably had a little too much to eat and drink these past few days – still at least it’s only once a year!
While you’re resting up and taking it easy before going back to work why not take a look around other areas of the Perfect Pieces website that you might not have looked at.
There’s the Perfect Pieces Newsletter. We try to send it out each month and write about something different each time – it might be a small pottery we’ve come across, a fair we’ve recently visited, new stock that’s of particular interest or just general chit chat from the antique world.
Click here to view the current Perfect Pieces Newsletter
Or our online Pottery Marks guide. Here we’ve put together a whole host of pottery marks from items we’ve had, images other people have sent in to try and build up a database of pottery marks that might help people in identifying their items.
Click here to view our Pottery Marks Guide
Or if you fancy a bit more shopping(!) visit our full stock page. Here you can view all the current pieces of pottery and glass we have for sale.
Click here to view our current selection of pottery items for sale
If you’re looking for information on antiques and collectables or are simply looking to buy a piece of antique pottery then it’s definitely worth checking out the Perfect Pieces website.
We have a wide range of information for you to browse including a Pottery Mark database, information on the history of many of the well-known British Potteries, and an online antique pottery price guide which features many pieces we have sold over the years.
We also offer information on how to pack pottery when posting it, how to check pieces over so you can be sure of their condition and we have a comprehensive list of FAQs to answer any of those unanswered questions!
If you can think of anything else we could add to our site that you think would be of interest or use to fellow visitors then do let us know. We’re always keen to continue expanding the Perfect Pieces website so any suggestions are always welcome.
Click here to visit the Perfect Pieces website
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
We have just published another Perfect Pieces Newsletter - Identifying Pottery Marks – Where To Start? So why not take a look at it?
This edition looks into British Pottery Marks and how to go about identifying what you might have. With examples of a few pottery marks and suggestions on further reading if you’re interested in knowing more about British Pottery Marks it’s certainly worth a read.
Our newsletters can cover anything from helpful guides, to new stock, to a look at the different potteries from around the UK.
If you’d like to receive our free email newsletter then simply enter your email address into the box at the bottom of the Newsletter page and you’ll then receive a copy of the next newsletter we publish.
To view the current Perfect Pieces Newsletter – Click Here.
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!
As you might guess, our newsletter this month takes a look at the all-important subject of understanding and interpreting pottery marks.
There’s often more information available on the base of a pot than you expect- they’re a bit like the DNA of a human being (well, almost…) Certainly most marks usually provide enough information to give a fairly clear picture of the age, design and manufacture of the piece.
Take a look here to read the newsletter itself, or check out our database of pottery marks, here.
