Buffalo China Marks: Dated Backstamps You Can Read

Buffalo is the rare American pottery where dating is a matter of reading rather than deduction, because the factory put the year of manufacture into the printed backstamp itself.

From 1901 to 1940 the mark carries a four-digit year, straightforwardly the year the piece was made. A backstamp reading 1907 means 1907.

From 1940 the plain year was replaced by a letter and number code, where the letter is the year and the number is the month. A is 1940 and the sequence runs forward: B-6 is June 1941, J-3 is March 1949, K is 1950, T is 1960, and U through W cover 1960 to 1962.

After 1962 the factory moved to a month-year form such as 6-65 for June 1965. From 1967 a quarter system using asterisks appears: one asterisk for the first quarter, two for the second, two plus one for the third and two plus two for the fourth, followed by the year.

Codes used from 1978 onward have not been deciphered, so for late pieces the mark style and the company history below are what you have to work with.

Buffalo Pottery was founded in 1901 at Buffalo, New York by John D. Larkin, and it existed for a specific commercial reason: to supply the Larkin Company, a mail-order soap business, with china dinnerware to give away as premiums with its products.

The plant was completed in 1903, occupying 8.5 acres with an 80,000 square foot building described at the time as the largest fireproof pottery in the world.

The premium business explains the dating habit. A company giving china away with soap needed to track production precisely against catalogue offers and redemption periods, and printing the year into the transfer mark was the simplest way to do it. The side effect, a century later, is that Buffalo is one of the easiest American potteries to date accurately.

The later history sets the outer limits. The firm changed its name from Buffalo Pottery to Buffalo China, Inc. in 1956. Oneida Limited acquired the company in 1983 and sold the Buffalo factory to Niagara Ceramics Corporation, with manufacturing ceasing in 2004, ending a hundred years of ceramic production in Buffalo. Oneida retained the trademark and has continued to sell dinnerware under the Buffalo China name since.

A Buffalo backstamp is a printed transfer, and the date is only part of it.

• The buffalo device. A standing buffalo encircled by lettering is the core of the mark.
• The body name. SEMI-VITREOUS appears on the general dinnerware body. Later restaurant and institutional ware carries different body wording.
• The pattern name, printed alongside, which for restaurant ware is often the name of the hotel, railroad or institution that ordered it.
• Custom marks. Because Buffalo supplied hotels, railways and clubs, many pieces carry a customer crest and no pattern name at all, which is a large part of why restaurant ware collectors chase them.

Read the date code first, then the body wording, then the customer. Backstamps on pre-1940 production were applied as part of the larger printed transfer mark, so the date should look integral to the design rather than added beside it. A date that sits apart from the transfer, in a different ink or a different sharpness, deserves a second look.

Because Buffalo marks are dated, they are an attractive target: a false early date adds value without changing the pot.

What to check on a piece where the date drives the price:

• Ink and register. On genuine pre-1940 ware the date was applied as part of the larger printed transfer, so ink colour, line weight and wear should match across the whole mark. A crisper or differently coloured date is a warning.
• Glaze over the mark. An underglaze mark sits beneath a continuous glaze surface. A mark you can feel, or one with a slight edge under a fingernail, has been added on top.
• Wear agreement. A base worn from decades of table use should show that wear across the mark too, not around a pristine island of printing.
• Advertising plates. Reproduction advertising plates carrying Buffalo Pottery marks are documented, so treat a collectable advertising subject with a very early date as a claim to verify rather than accept.

When the price turns on a date, compare the backstamp against a documented example of the same year before buying.

The date code is often small and set into the transfer, so resolution matters more than lighting drama here.

Use soft, even light with no direct flash so the glaze does not blow out the fine print, and get close enough that the individual characters of the code are sharp. If the code is a letter and a number separated by a dash, make sure the dash is legible, because it separates year from month.

Photograph it and the app identifies it, and the exact code in your own photograph is what you match against the year table above.