Makers Marks: What They Are and How to Identify One

A maker's mark is the name, initials or symbol put on an object to show who made it, or, on British silver, who took legal responsibility for it at the assay office. On silver and gold it is struck with a punch; on pottery it is printed, painted or pressed into the clay; on jewellery it is usually a tiny stamp inside a band or near a clasp.

The idea is old. The Goldsmiths' Company Assay Office in London dates the maker's mark to a 1363 ordinance of Edward III, which made goldsmiths add their own mark next to the leopard's head that had been required since a statute of 1300. The date letter followed in 1478 and the lion passant in 1544.

Ceramics use the same idea with more variety. The 1894 edition of Hooper and Phillips' *Manual of Marks on Pottery and Porcelain* sorts the marks on a pot into three kinds: the factory mark, the workman's mark and the pattern mark, which is usually just a number and means little without the factory's pattern book.

If you searched for the Kentucky bourbon brand Maker's Mark, this page is not about it; it covers the marks stamped on silver, jewellery and ceramics.

The two words are often used as if they mean the same thing, but they answer different questions.

• A maker's mark answers who made it or who sent it for testing. Anyone can strike one.
• A hallmark is the full set of marks struck by an independent assay office after testing the metal. In Britain today the compulsory marks are the sponsor's (maker's) mark, the millesimal fineness number and the assay office mark; the date letter is now optional.

This matters most outside Britain. The United States never had a national assaying system or a national date-letter system, so American silver usually carries only a maker's name plus STERLING or 925; Tiffany and Gorham ran their own private date codes. A number such as 925 struck on its own is, strictly, an unattested fineness mark applied by the maker, not a hallmark. Australia never made hallmarking compulsory either, which is why marks like STG SIL exist there.

So a British piece with a full set of marks has been independently tested, while an American or Australian piece with a maker's mark and STERLING is the maker's own claim. Both can be perfectly genuine; only the first was checked by someone else.

Work from what you can read toward what you have to look up.

• Light it from the side. A lamp or phone torch held low throws a struck mark into relief; a printed pottery mark wants soft, even light instead.
• Read the words first. STERLING, 925, EPNS, ENGLAND, MADE IN JAPAN or a registration number narrow the country and period before you know the maker.
• Describe the symbol, not the maker you hope it is. Old mark dictionaries are arranged this way: Hooper and Phillips group marks under plain descriptive heads such as anchor, crown, sword, star and shield, and arrange East Asian marks by the number of characters.
• Copy the shape of the punch or outline. Silver makers often used the same initials inside different shields, and directories separate them by the outline.
• Check the mark against the object. A mark that belongs to a maker who never made that kind of object, or to a period that does not fit the style, is a warning. Our guide on spotting a reproduction covers the cross-checks.
• Use the right directory. The list in the next section sends each kind of mark to the page or reference that covers it.

Match what you see to the reference that covers it. These are the pages and outside directories that answer each kind of mark.

• A lion, a leopard's head or an anchor with a letter is a British hallmark: start with British sterling hallmarks and English date letters. For British and Irish makers' initials, the free silvermakersmarks.co.uk database (updated 14 September 2026) and the London Assay Office trace service are the next stop.
• STERLING or 925 with a company name is usually American or modern: see 925 and coin silver, Gorham and Tiffany.
• STG, STG SIL or S. SIL is most often Australian: see the STG silver mark.
• EPNS, EP, A1 or Quadruple Plate means silver plate: see silver plate company marks.
• 800 or 830 with a crescent and crown is continental: see 800 and 830 silver. 84 is Russian: see the 84 zolotnik mark.
• Crossed swords in blue points to Meissen; red Chinese characters to red marks on pottery.
• ENGLAND, a diamond or an Rd number on pottery is dated in pottery marks identification.
• A mark on jewellery: Lang Antiques keeps a jewellery maker's marks database; the mark is usually inside the band or by the clasp.

A maker's mark records a claim; it is not proof. The most valuable marks are the ones most often added to later copies: Chenghua-period chicken cups, for example, were reproduced through the Qing dynasty and are still made as replicas today, marks included.

A mark also rarely gives the year on its own. Outside Britain there is usually no date letter, and many marks were used unchanged for decades. Use the mark to find the maker, then date the piece from the version of the mark, the style and the construction. Our guide on reading hallmarks and maker's marks explains how to treat the mark as one piece of evidence among several.

Fill the frame with the mark and hold the light low and to one side so the punch edges throw shadows; for printed ceramic marks, use soft light and tilt the piece until the glare moves off the mark. Do not polish tarnished silver first, because a dark mark reads better. Take a second photo of the whole object. The app identifies the mark from the photo; use the pages above to check what it tells you.