I wanted to list an item on Wifey’s Ebay site, but could barely read the mark on the back of a decorative plate. Shown photo enhanced is a factory mark I did not reconize. I turned to our book shelves for help.

Our library of antiquing books contains two volumes that get lots of attention with wifey’s antique business. The one we have had the longest is “Kovel’s New Dictionary of Marks.” Published in 1986, it’s from Crown Publishers. Inc of New York by Ralph and Terry Kovel. It covers the world of ceramic companies.

The second, a newer book, acquired just a few years ago, is “U.S. Marks on Pottery, Porcelain and Clay” by Lois Lehner, published by Collectors Books a division of Schroeder Publishing Inc. © 1988.

Since neither book contains prices, they provide a wealth of information without losing their usefulness with age.

The Kovel book has an interesting arrangement for finding and identifying marks, especially when blurred, partial or faded. The layout of the pages are by the actual major design element of the maker’s mark in alphabetical order – Animals, Arrows, Banners, Birds, Cartouche, etc.

In the boxed section containing the logo is a small synopsis of the company essentials, the factory name, locations, dates the mark was used, successor companies, and years the factory was in production.  Here I found the information I was looking for.

Back pages titled “The Vocabulary of Marks” list the dates country names were first included on the pieces, the meaning of words found in marks, dating systems listed by company, and factory’s family trees.

Lehner’s Encyclopedia of U.S. Marks is the “War & Peace” of antiquing books. Containing 634 pages, it’s arranged alphabetically by factory name. In the back are definitions used in the book, lists of various types of manufacturers, railroad letters and symbols used on diner car china plus electrical porcelain insulator markings.

Each company listed contains a great deal of detailed information on the founders, locations, dates, products and general history of the factories along with examples of the various iterations of the marks used.

The importance of identifying the marks and knowing the history are two-fold, first is having a key word or “tag” to include with wifey’s on-line antique listings, that steer searchers to her Ebay site.

Secondly, age and obscurity drive the passion of many collectors, and knowing the history and longevity of a particular mark’s usage, adds validity to your purchase price.

One other book in our library is this recent addition titled “Antique Trader, Pottery & Porcelain Ceramics, by Kyle Hosfloen, published by Krause Publications in 2006 and listed as its 5^th edition.

While on the same general subject as the other books, it is first and foremost a price guide and includes dolls, figurines, cookie jars and lamps among the more common shapes and functions of typical pottery. Filled with color photos in 768 pages, this book also includes a small glossary on the back pages.

Alphabetically arranged, mixing categories with manufacturers, this book also contains histories of items and companies throughout, so when looking up examples of children’s ABC plates, we first learn they were popular at the turn of the last century, often incorporating the alphabet on the rim and scenes or rhymes at center. Other reference books are suggested for the serious collector throughout. The ABC section is followed by the manufacturer Abingdon, and so on. 

We find this book’s usefulness in the information sections provided, the introduction to each entry and the quality of the pictures, along with the relationship between prices of like item you might see in a retail setting. Since antique and collectible values can change in either direction and have contracted in recent years, the use of any guide should be verified with recent sales on sites like Ebay or Tias.com.

The newswires are filled with stories on the recent discovery of the remains of a Dodo bird found in a cave beneath bamboo and tea plantations in Mauritius, an island located in the Indian Ocean.

Dodo remains are rare finds. The last time Dodo skeletons were discovered was in 2005 when a mass grave was found in the southeastern part of the island known as Mare aux Songes — but the hot, wet, acidic environment meant poor DNA survival. Before that 2005 discovery the previous Dodo remains were found in 1920.

What really thrills scientists is that this skeleton, named Fred, was found intact and, having been isolated in a cave, well preserved enough that ‘he’ may be an excellent DNA source. Julian Hume, a palaeontologist at London’s Natural History Museum, said, “Then you can work out how it actually got to Mauritius, because it must have originally flown here before evolving into flightlessness and the big, fat bird that we know.”

While all of this is exciting, especially to a science geek like me, the reason the story’s been making the newswire rounds is because Fred was discovered just days after those wacky Kovels had mentioned the Dodo in one of their newsletters. Yet the Kovels knew nothing of Fred’s discovery because both he and the information of his existence were guarded until after he was safely removed.

In their newsletter, dated June 7, 2007, the Kovels told the story of a stuffed Dodo at the Ashmolean Museum in England:

It was in sad condition, and in 1755 the trustees decided to destroy it rather than spend the time and money to preserve it. The dilapidated stuffed bird was just tossed into a fire. Only a leg and the head survived the flames. Fortunately the parts were saved by another museum and we hear the relics have undergone DNA testing.

We can only guess what the value would be today of a whole stuffed dodo bird. So remember as you think about your collection: Never throw anything away just because it’s in bad condition. Sometimes it’s the only example you will ever find.

You know that I (as a hoarder, preserver of boxes, and mutant toy collector) agree with the Kovels. Don’t throw that out!

But this also reminded me of the expression, Dead as a Dodo, (and the similar or related Dumb as a Dodo, also discussed in Kovels June 14, 2007 newsletter), and of a conversation we had with the children just this past weekend.

We were discussing silent films and how many of these old films are gone forever because Hollywood actually reused the film. A combination of both conscious act (trying to save money by reusing celluloid) and ignorance (who knew that films which were no longer wanted by theaters would have any value?), film was recycled and thus we no longer have many of the old silent movies. The girls couldn’t fathom a universe in which movies and its related memorabilia weren’t valued and so they struggled with the concept, if not the actual losses in cinema history.

So Derek compared this to the original Disney animation cels which were dipped (just as Roger Rabbit et all feared!) so that the acetate could be reused for new animated films. This hit them hard, of course.

But all of this brings up the matter of technology. While Collin discusses, correctly, that vinyl has a short life and that one ought to preserve recordings digitally, what other advances render objects, collectibles, obsolete — as dead as Dodos?

Michael Sporn was similarly prompted by Dodos. Seeing the January 22, 2007, issue of The New Yorker, Sporn blogged:

This made me wonder if hand-drawn animation is going to go a similar way. Will they be able to find the bones a hundred years from now? Evidence seen in the past five years or so seems to give me little reason to doubt that it would be gone. MoCap will get better and the guise of animation will be front and center for the obvious future. There’s a good chance tomorrow will show us two of three nominees for Oscar’s Best Animated Feature will be Motion Capture. The animator as we knew it is virtually dead.

Still thinking of the issue, a week later Sporn revisited the issue with a deeper discussion of Motion Capture animation.

If technology threatens to render things obsolete, what will we do with all those things? They should be stored — and properly. But as recently as the 1960’s Warner Brothers destroyed nearly all the animation art they had in storage simply because they had no room for it. What will become of the things which exist now?

It is said that the Dodo died was because they were 1) fearless of people; 2) pushed out, made homeless, by humans cutting down their forest homes in the name of progress; and 3) flightless, so they laid their eggs on the ground where dogs, pigs and other critters ate them, dwindling their numbers.

As collectors we should learn from this.

We should be ‘afraid’ of what careless people will do with ‘obsolete’ objects. We should be sure to consider storage matters, make sure there will always be homes for items of value. And we should never leave our ‘babies’ where the ‘pigs’ can dwindle their numbers.