Method
What this site is built from, and where that source stops.
One source, cited by page
Every factual claim on a maker entry is transcribed from William Chaffers, Marks and Monograms on European and Oriental Pottery and Porcelain, 1891 edition (Reeves & Turner, London), working from the scan held by the Internet Archive. Each claim carries the page it came from. Nothing is added from memory or from other websites.
Two kinds of mark, and the difference is shown
Chaffers draws some marks as engravings and describes others only in words. Those are different levels of evidence, so each plate says which it is. A mark shown as an engraving is cropped from the page scan. A mark the source only named is set as type and labelled as such — never drawn, because drawing it would show you a picture the source never made.
Where the source stops, and it matters
Chaffers was published in 1891. It therefore does not cover:
- American art pottery — Roseville, Weller, McCoy, Grueby and Haeger all postdate it and none appears in the book at all.
- Most twentieth-century British and Irish potteries, including Arklow, Ellgreave, Bretby and Moorcroft.
- Twentieth-century backstamps generally, including later marks of factories the book does cover. A Denby entry here describes the nineteenth century and says nothing about a 1960s Denby stamp.
If a maker is absent from this site, the likeliest reason is that it is absent from the source — not that no mark exists.
Doubt is reproduced, not smoothed away
Where Chaffers questions an attribution, the entry carries the doubt and labels it. The E. BOURNE stamp is the worked example: it is widely listed as a Denby mark, and Chaffers judges it more probably from the Bournes of Fenton, Staffordshire.
What this site will not do
It does not value objects, authenticate them, or tell you what yours is worth. It reports what a nineteenth-century reference recorded, with the page, so you can weigh it yourself.