Wedgwood marks

How to read it

William Chaffers’s catalogue (1912 edition), quoting the Wedgwood scholar Frederick Rathbone, sets out the marks in order. Wedgwood & Bentley, from Josiah Wedgwood’s partnership with Thomas Bentley, marks basalt vases, intaglios and the blue and white jasper plaques, medallions and portraits made between 1768 and 1780; jasper vases of that time carry only the word Wedgwood. After Bentley’s death the single word Wedgwood, in various sizes, became the mark. WEDGWOOD with ETRURIA, the name of the works, was used from about 1840 but soon dropped. The porcelain Wedgwood made from about 1805 to 1815 has the name printed in red, blue or gold, and porcelain made again from 1878 has a printed mark. The word ENGLAND was added in 1891, to meet the new American customs rules of the McKinley Tariff Act.

Also searched as: wedgewood, wedgwood date codes, wedgwood impressed mark, wedgwood marks.

Three code letters beside the name

A row of three capital letters impressed near the name is a date code. Chaffers, citing Eliza Meteyard, says the letters began in 1860 with O, P standing for 1861, and that the first letter stood for the workman, the second for the month and the third for the year. Meteyard’s own Wedgwood Handbook of 1875 puts the start earlier: three capitals together show a piece is not older than 1845, she writes, and elsewhere in the same book, not more than thirty or thirty-five years old.

Wedgwood & Bentley dates

The partnership years differ slightly between the two books. Rathbone’s list in Chaffers dates the Wedgwood & Bentley marks 1768 to 1780. Meteyard gives the Wedgwood and Bentley period as 1769 to 1780, ending with Bentley’s death in November 1780.

Wedgewood with an E

A mark spelled Wedgewood is another maker’s. Chaffers records that about 1848 Wedgwood of Etruria applied for an injunction against William Smith and others of Stockton-on-Tees, whose stamp was Wedgewood instead of Wedgwood. N. Hudson Moore (1909) says the Stockton firm also used “Wedgwood & Co.” and the initials W. S. & Co., and Frederick Litchfield says Newcastle potters marked imitations of Wedgwood’s cream-coloured ware “Wedgewood”. Meteyard lists Wedgwood & Co., Wadgwood and Wedgewood among the marks of other makers. Chaffers also notes a factory in Holland, set up about 1840 by a man named Smith, that stamped its ware Wedgwood, and gives this as the reason the Staffordshire firm added Etruria to its mark for a time.