Lehner's Encyclopedia Of US Marks On Pottery, Porcelain Clay

This is my best resource for identifying American ceramics with two exceptions: any California pottery except the largest and best known companies, and studio pottery which is outside the scope of this guide. I have been able to determine in which line of products an item fits, and differentiate years of production. These issues are particularly confusing for the California potteries where company buyouts and movement of designers and artisans from one company to another were rampant in the mid 20th century.A new edition would help fill the holes with input from collectors in particular.

I bought this on a whim for my husband who collects restaurant china. It was a used copy and was only a couple dollars. This book is an amazing fountain of information on china markings. He has not stopped reading it. If I had spent 500$ on this it would have been worth it given the amount of pleasure he has gotten from this reference.My husband dragged out his entire collection of restaurant china and was able to accurately identify every single piece by the maker. Since he is not interested in resale, the lack of current valuation was not an issue. Being able to get insight into each piece was of great import. He is also not a collector of sets; he has a lot of random pieces he was able to place geographically and in time.This is an amazing, well researched guide to US made china and would be a great addition to the collector's library.

This is an incredibly detailed compilation of pottery manufacturer information, assembled before PCs and spreadsheets would have made the job easier. I consult this book constantly for identification purpose but also history and to use some of the additional materials about distributors and the geographical index. Using this work in conjunction with visiting RWCN, the Restaurant Ware Collectors Network (http://www.restaurantwarecollectors.com) will help with many many ID questions for identifying the more utilitarian pottery and porcelain once produced by so many US companies. Sadly, the book is a catalog of one sector of our own industrial past, as little remains today.

This book is huge and is loaded with every mark and pattern you can think of.

I liked everything about this book.

Chocked full of useful info.

This book is prodigious in scope: the pottery marks (with huge varieties within each company) and historical information are both invaluable and interesting. However, the indexing is weak, which leads one to thumbing through pages trying to find an elusive mark. This is such a well-researched, vast collection of marks, however, that laborious searches are rewarded.

Perfect condition. Great addition to my research library.