What's Under the Base? Reading Maker's Marks on Wigan Finds

There's a ritual that regulars at the Sunday car boots around Robin Park know well. You pick a piece up, turn it over, and squint at the base before remembering the reading glasses are in the car. Nine times out of ten the underside tells you more than the seller can: a pressed backstamp, a scratched-in pair of initials, a cluster of tiny punches that look like a code. The rest of the time you're guessing — and guessing is where money gets lost.

What follows is a working guide to those marks, written for buyers around Wigan who'd like to know what they're holding before handing over a tenner. None of it replaces a proper valuation on something genuinely rare, but it will stop you paying over the odds for ordinary Victorian ware with a handsome-looking squiggle on it.

Start With the Magnifier, Not the Price Tag

A 10x jeweller's loupe costs less than a round of drinks and lives happily in a coat pocket. Pair it with the torch on your phone and you've got a decent field kit. Check four places on any piece: the base, the rim, the handle or lug, and — on flatware — the stem just below the bowl.

Two habits are worth breaking early. The first is rubbing a mark with your thumb, which polishes away the very detail you're trying to read. The second is assuming a mark you can't decipher must be rare. Usually it's worn, badly struck, or simply a pattern number.

Metalware: Hallmarks, Touchmarks and Boast Marks

British silver is the easy end of the market because the system is regulated. A sterling piece should carry a maker's or sponsor's mark, an assay office mark, a fineness mark and a date letter. The assay marks are the quickest tells: the lion passant for sterling, the leopard's head for London, the anchor for Birmingham, the rose or crown for Sheffield, the castle for Edinburgh, the sword for Chester — though Chester closed in 1962, a useful cut-off when someone swears blind a piece is interwar.

Silver plate is where beginners come unstuck. Look for EPNS, EP or 'electro plated' and accept that these are base metal with a silver skin. Stamps reading A1, 'quadruple' or 'best quality' are claims by the manufacturer, not a date and not a maker. They tell you the plater was a confident salesperson. Nothing more.

Pewter is the connoisseur's corner. Genuine touchmarks sit on the inside of the base or along the rim, often half-lost to wear. Many provincial pewterers used pseudo-hallmarks — a crowned rose, a hand, a scatter of Xs — partly as quality marks, partly as decoration. A mark doesn't prove age; plenty of later pewter was stamped with a romanticised 'London' touch to suggest it.

Brass and copper rarely carry a maker at all. Words like 'Warranted', 'Best Brass' or 'Solid' are advertisements. A great many Wigan household pieces came out of small foundries across the coalfield that never stamped a thing, so an absence of marks is normal rather than suspicious.

The Back of a Pot: Impressed, Printed and Incised

On ceramics, the method matters as much as the wording. Impressed marks, pressed into the clay before firing, tend to belong to the earlier factory-scale end of production. Printed backstamps in underglaze blue generally point to the later nineteenth century onwards.

Two date cues are worth memorising. The registration diamond, a small lozenge packed with Roman numerals and letters, was used on British designs between 1842 and 1883; after that the system switched to a simple 'Rd.' plus a number. And from 1891, wares exported to America had to state their country of origin, which is why 'England' turns up on so much late Victorian and Edwardian pottery and why 'Made in England' generally signals the twentieth century.

Local pieces are trickier. The small potteries serving Wigan's pubs, farms and kitchens often used a painted or impressed name that wore away in the washhouse. If a piece is attributed to a local works on the strength of a faint impression, ask the seller how they got there. A confident story is not a provenance.

Four Marks That Get Misread Most Weeks

• Numbers. A four-figure number on the base is almost always a pattern or shape number — not a date, not a limited edition.
• Retailer's stamps. A shop name from Wigan, St Helens or Warrington tells you where something was sold, not who made it.
• Imported blanks. 'Foreign' and similar marks on ceramics usually point to German or Japanese production, often decorated closer to home.
• Suspiciously crisp punches. A bright, sharp mark on an obviously worn object is a warning, not a find.

When a Faint Mark Earns Its Premium

A worn mark justifies extra money in three situations. First, when it identifies a known local maker and the object matches their output in shape, weight and finish. Second, when it pins down a date range that genuinely changes rarity — an early piece from a short-lived works, say. Third, when the mark is faint from honest wear but still clear enough for someone who knows the field to confirm it.

It is not worth a premium when the seller is doing the identifying. 'They reckon it's local' should lower your offer, not raise it. Pay for what you can read; treat the rest as decoration.

A Pocket Checklist for the Next Boot Sale

Take the loupe. Look before you polish. Read the mark twice under a torch. Separate maker from retailer, and boast from fact. And if a mark is the only thing making a piece expensive, walk away, get a brew, and come back in twenty minutes — the price often does the same.