Majolica Pottery Marks: Wedgwood

As we recently posted, Minton majolica used a complex series of marks including a date code symbol to mark its earthenware. However it was not the only pottery to date code its majolica.

Wedgwood, which began potting majolica in 1861, used a simple letter system to mark its earthenware and pearlware. Like Minton, Wedgwood was quite fastidious about marking their wares. It's not common to find a piece of Wedgwood majolica that does not have at least an impressed WEDGWOOD mark impressed into the body of the piece. The entire word may not be visible but enough should be there to make out.  If the word WEDGWOOD is not visible the three letter date coding system should be visible. The three letter impressed mark that accompanies the Wedgwood mark tells the story of where and when the piece was made. Let us explain.

From 1860 to 1907 the first letter indicated the month of production. January, February, April, September, October, November and December are always show by their first letter. June is always T and August is always W. In 1860-1863 March is M, May is Y and July is V. In 1864 March becomes R, May is M and July is L. In 1871 Wedgwood adopted pattern numbers with the code letter prefixes.
From 1907 to 1924 the month letter was replaced with the number 3 to indicate the year cycle the piece was made in. From 1925 to 1930 the 3 was replaced with a 4.

The second letter indicates the potter who made the piece.

The third letter indicates the year of production. This system consisted of three cycles. Wedgwood began the date code system in 1860 with the letter O. It then progressed through Z for 1871. The second cycle begins in 1872 with A and progresses through Z with 1897 and the third cycle begins with 1898 and concludes with the letter F for 1929. From this point on the company just used the numerical date. The word ENGLAND was added to the piece between 1890 and 1909. This was replaced with MADE IN ENGLAND after 1910, the year that general majolica manufacture ceased at Wedgwood. With pieces made after 1928 the last digit was replaced with the two digit year.

Wedgwood continued making green majolica on and off through the remainder of the 20th Century and even made a limited line of full color pieces in the Strawberry & Grape pattern right after WWII. These pieces are all marked MADE IN ENGLAND or ETRURIA ENGLAND. The later green wares also have the ink Wedgwood and Etruria & Barleston mark, but none of these are considered Victorian majolica.

Let me show an example:

Here is the front of a Wedgwood platter.

Wedgwood majolica strawberry platter

Here is how it is marked on the reverse.

The first letter T on this platter indicates that the piece was potted in June. The last letter G indicates that the piece was made in 1878 or 1904. The word ENGLAND does not appear on the piece so 1904 can be discounted, hence we can be certain that this particular platter was made in June of 1878.

In addition to this date code we can see a faint English registration mark on the left which is too difficult to read in this example. If it were readable it would also give us the exact day the design was registered by Wedgwood.

Unfortunately it's necessary to note that a monkey wrench can be thrown into this entire process because there were occasions when the first letter and second letter were switched so that the month letter was the second one. The only way to be absolutely positive that the month is correct is by having either the first or second letter be a letter that was not used during the corresponding year. 

This can get awfully confusing but when you're dealing with a process that was in place for 51 years you're bound to find such variations.

Wedgwood plate with impressed mark post 1910. 

This plate shows a date code for 1931. 

Wedgwood Etruria & Barlaston mark, post 1940

Wedgwood 20th century majolica-style plate, marked ETRURIA ENGLAND. 

The Etruria location began production in the 1940s

Reverse of the majolica-style Wedgwood grape and 

strawberry plate shown above.

Another mark that can be found on the reverse of some pieces of Wedgwood majolica is a four number serial number. Prefaced by either a K or an M, this mark references the Wedgwood pattern books which indicate the exact shape of that particular piece. These marks can also assist in dating a piece because designs can be dated as well. (A list of the Wedgwood pattern shapes can be found in the appendix of Victoria Bergensen's wonderful book Majolica: British, Continental and American Wares, 1851-1915.) 

Let's say the imprinted year date code is a P. This letter can stand for 1861, 1887 or 1913. There is no ENGLAND impressed on the piece so we can discount 1913 as a possible year of production. That leaves us with the possible dates of 1861 and 1887 as year of manufacture. The pattern shape number is M3020. If we check the Bergensen book, we can see that patterns with numbers above 3000 were not introduced until after 1881. That discounts the possibility that 1861 is the year of production for this piece leaving us with the remaining year 1887.

This particular number was found on the reverse of a plate designated in the pattern books as Fruit dessert plate–the plate below.

Wedgwood majolica fruit plate

So as you can see, this is a relatively useful little system that can tell you quite a bit more about your Wedgwood piece than you imagined.

A graph based on Bergensen's catalog number approximations is shown below.

When it comes to identifying a piece of Wedgwood majolica I should also say something about the way Wedgwood majolica is glazed on the underside. The underside of most pieces of Wedgwood majolica will be glazed in one of four ways: mottled in a tortoiseshell manner in brown, yellow and green; mottled in a tortoiseshell manner in brown, yellow and blue; covered in a clear ivory or white glaze; splashed in brown on an ivory ground; or a combination of mottled rim and white center like the one shown directly below. 

Twentieth century majolica-style pieces have solid yellow or green colored reverses.

Wedgwood strawberry plate reverse

Wedgwood majolica splashed brown on white reverse

The only exceptions you will find is in very small pieces which could be glazed the same color as the obverse, or monochromatic pieces like the sold green pieces.

One of these treatments in combination to the marks I mentioned earlier will assist in identifying a piece of Wedgwood majolica.