Why did furniture makers put their mark on an invisible surface ?

shop deals on amazon
sauter shop
UKworkshop.co.uk

Help Support UKworkshop.co.uk:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
T

tibi

Established Member
UKW Supporter
Joined
27 Nov 2020
Messages
893
Reaction score
352
Location
Slovakia
Hello,

I was just wondering why early furniture makers (and maybe also nowadays as well) put their mark on a surface where it cannot be easily seen?

As I have found in this definition:
A telltale sign of the furniture's maker is a manufacturing tag, label or stamp bearing the name of the creator. Such a marking or label may have been placed inside a drawer on an old dresser, on the back of a chest of drawers, or on the underside of a chair or sofa seat.

Today people want to maximize their advertising space and want their products to be instantly recognized to belong to their brand. E.g. I cannot imagine Adidas putting their brand only as a tiny mark under the shoe insole or finding the car brand only as a small stamp etched next to the VIN code on the car chassis.

Why did or do furniture manufacturers deliberately hide their "brand"? Is it because in the past, humility was perceived to be more of a virtue?

And is it somewhat wrong to put your mark on a visible place (if the mark is small), e.g. edge of the table or a front board on the bed?

Thank you.
 
I used to work for a company where all the makers had a unique stamp.
We stamped what we made in a hidden area so that, in the future, if there were issues it could be traced back to an individual.
 
It's only last maybe 40 years that any manufacturer other than vehicles and white goods have put their brands in a visible place. Stuff sold and was appreciated on its quality, not its manufacturer. Mass production means that most stuff across the price range looks pretty much the same and needs labels to communicate.
 
Dee J said:
It's only last maybe 40 years that any manufacturer other than vehicles and white goods have put their brands in a visible place. Stuff sold and was appreciated on its quality, not its manufacturer. Mass production means that most stuff across the price range looks pretty much the same and needs labels to communicate.
Click to expand...
My idea was that you are a higher class citizen in the 17th century and you go somewhere and you see a beautiful high-end table and you really want to order a similar one from the same manufacturer. You have no one to ask who had built the table, so you need to crawl underneath the table and search for the marker's stamp. Being able to identify manufacturer would bring more job to the person ( if he was not already overwhelmed by word of mouth references)
 
doctor Bob said:
I used to work for a company where all the makers had a unique stamp.
We stamped what we made in a hidden area so that, in the future, if there were issues it could be traced back to an individual.
Click to expand...
Yes, I have worked at similar company as well. This has to deal with quality control, so that you can blame the individual if you get a claim from the customer. I was talking more about branding than quality control stamp.

But to conclude, I assume that good craftsmen had enough work by word of mouth reference and there was no mass manufacturing, that they did not have the capacity for the extra orders that would result from their products being branded and more recognizable.
 
Some English Arts & Crafts workshops carved a discrete but visible token their products; check out 'mouseman' or 'gnomeman', plenty of others.
 
Is it possible that someone might put their stamp in a place that would not be accessible after glue-up so that it is clear that the mark was applied during assembly and not by some nefarious imposter at some later date who was trying to pass off a Bloggs as a Chippendale?
 
tibi said:
My idea was that you are a higher class citizen in the 17th century and you go somewhere and you see a beautiful high-end table and you really want to order a similar one from the same manufacturer. You have no one to ask who had built the table, so you need to crawl underneath the table and search for the marker's stamp. Being able to identify manufacturer would bring more job to the person ( if he was not already overwhelmed by word of mouth references)
Click to expand...
Not quite sure that is how it worked in the 17th Century...
You would probably have had someone local who made furniture / if you were the wealthy top sector of society then they probably lived on and worked on your estate - if you saw something you liked you would send your man over who would meet the housekeeper / butler who would take them into the drawing room / dining room to show them the piece of furniture - your man would then make a copy of it.
I think that Chippendale with his pattern book was one of the earlier attempts at attempting a more national brand and he was 18th century (1700s)

I have commissioned a number of things over the years - pottery does have a tradition going back through the centuries of marking the bottom of the piece, artwork is generally signed, other than that, not sure what has been marked - certainly the furniture I have commissioned has no indication of the maker, bespoke clothing will generally have a subtle label (nothing external) - wouldn't buy it if it was branded in that way...
 
paulrbarnard said:
I really dislike using myself as an advertising board. I won’t buy anything to overtly branded. I tolerate a discreet logo if there is no choice.
Click to expand...
This reminds me of a character in one of William Gibsons books ( maybe "pattern recognition" ). She is allergic to branding and has a physical reaction to certain logos.

Ollie
 
Manufacturers have been using visible branding for a very long time, it’s not a new idea, the guys who painted inside Egyptian tombs left their trademarks. If you buy an ikea wardrobe now does it have Ikea written on it? No, but it might have a label on the back.
 
I have to check my book when I get back but I'm sure that at a point in time it was uncommon however with the establishment of larger scale manufacturing in the 18th (possibly 17th century) in France branding ones furnitire was a legal requirement in order to maintain the standards of furnitire guilds so that shabby furniture made by a guild member could be traced and the problem dealt with.

We brand our furniture on the rails or chair backs but I know Victorian manufacturers were more inconspicuous about it.
 
If there is substance, the brand isn't needed. Branding is about giving perceived value to someone more or less by yelling an ego statement at them.

To apply the brand in an invisible spot may be a matter of authenticity, or in a place with larger makers, a way to also provide some information along with the brand (when made, who was the master, etc, what shop).

I can't think of a piece of furniture in my house with a visible branding and this is the USA - the land of brands.

In general, if I"m buying clothes, I will not buy anything that has a visible brand on the outside, though sometimes my wife buys clearance clothes for me and they do (I find it kind of grating).

I don't even love the idea about putting my name or initials on the peghead of guitars that I make. I do knock my brand into the end of planes or on the bottoms of chisels, but that's more traditional. Since I don't sell anything for a profit, it's partially a matter of being able to see that I did make something and I thought it was worth putting a brand on (vs. trial mules that have no mark).

I was just thinking about this yesterday - line 6 here makes guitar amps - they're inexpensive and electronic vs. hand wired type amps that are maybe less temporal.
https://www.sweetwater.com/store/de...alyst-60-1-by-12-inch-60-watt-combo-amplifier
the line 6 mark is kind of identified as a "OK" practice amp, or a modeling amp, it's sort of neutral except with people who hate electronics replacing analog stuff.

But the giant logo on the front of the amp - two of them actually, not a fan. The first picture I saw of the amp was only the top part, so I didn't know who the brand was or if that was the brand, but my initial thought was that just "CATALYST" printed on the top made it undesirable.
 
Some history of branding as perceived value would be an interesting discussion, too.

I'd guess in a world without regulation, branding was valuable for the group doing the branding, but also an assurance of quality. My friend George likes to describe the notion that we make only good things in the US and that stuff from china is often junk. When he was a kid, the junk was made in the US instead, and it wasn't uncommon to buy something that wasn't really fit for use or didn't last long.....but it was US made instead of coming from overseas.

I could see someone who might by, let's say, a piece of furniture with prada upholstry on it (if such a thing would even be done) for 4 times the cost of a similar quality piece of furniture maybe wanting the upholstery to say "prada" on it, but that'd be less branding and more wanting to get what you paid for (which is really the ability to prove that you could spend the money, thus the brand would need to show that to people without them checking a tag or looking under).
 
Little piece on makers' marks from an book on antiques I have at home
PXL_20220217_184016683.jpg
 
The idea of craftsmen (or very rarely, women) as genii and thus having a recognizable and valuable 'brand' is distinctly a Renaissance idea, specifically the book 'Lives of painters, sculptors, and architects' by Vasari in 1580-something. Prior to this, such occupations were simple trades; someone building a church would commission a mason, a carpenter, a painter, etc. etc. who would be paid on a piece-work basis. Marks were applied to claim payment; many such marks are found in medieval buildings, I'm sure @Adam W. is marking all his stuff the same way even today.
Obviously rich clients had their preferred tradespeople, much as they do today, but they were still 'just' trades, controlled by guilds and with a formal career progression.

Then Vasari introduced the notion that particularly skilled craftsmen were something more, something higher, a kind of genius, an artistic genius, in fact. And thus the concept of the Artist and 'art for art's sake' is born., and the demand for specific artists, and just any aul painter at all.

This idea originally applied only to architects, sculptors, and painters, but as time went by, it also became applied to carpenters (e.g Chippendale, the various New england workshops, etc.), doctors, economists, even tattooists (Sailer Gerry, anyone?)

I knew that Art History diploma would be useful for something eventually. ..
 
The phrase "You're paying for the label." Is the issue here. Emblazoning an item with a highly visible brand mark is marketing pure and simple. It appeals to those looking for a status symbol; "Look at my expensive *******; arn't I cool/rich/whatever. " As Ollie78 pointed out, you won't find a brand mark on the outside of a top quality Saville Row suit. The quality itself is the trademark. True, some artisans have a trademark, like Mouseman's mouse, or Rolls Royce's Spirit of Ecstasy ornament before it was quite rightly removed for safety reasons. One can argue that such things are part of the style of the item rather than just a marketing gimmick. Personally, I hate wearing advertising logos on my clothing; I'm not a billboard! Likewise, I would only put a logo on a woodwork project in a discrete place much like an artist puts a small signature in the corner of a painting to confirm authenticity.
Sadly we live in an era where discretion is a rare commodity.
 

Latest posts

Back
Top