Identifying and dating older wares made by Spode can be bewildering, particularly to new collectors. The Spode Museum Trust has an archive which dates back to the late 1770s and although extensive it is by no means complete. Even so, there are records of more than 75,000 patterns and thousands of shapes. Many of Spode's early pieces were unmarked. Later as the company grew and number of shapes
. and patterns began to increase, some pieces were marked, usually the most important piece of a tea or coffee service. As such services were never intended to be split it was felt that there was no need to mark each item. After all, Josiah Spode would have to account for the cost of hand-painting the name on each piece!Outlined here are some of the help you to date your pieces of older Spode. Several different names have been used during the last 220 years of production. (These include Spode, Spode and Copeland, Josiah Spode, Copeland and Garrett, W.T Copeland, W.T Copeland and Sons and Spode Ltd). However, there are over 300 versions of marks, known as backstamps, used by this company so it's not always straightforward. By the early 1800s many pieces of ware began to be marked. Early pieces of Spode predating 1883 can have marks which are impressed, painted or printed. Usually they just say Spode but this should not be confused with post 1970 wares with marks incorporating Spode, England.Early painted pieces will often have a pattern number applied too. Pattern numbers help a great deal in dating a piece. With more than 75,000 patterns several different series of number have been issued over the years and they have prefixes or a number above them which tell the researcher from which series they are.http://www.collectorcafe.com/article_archive.asp?article=140&id=1753Spode - the history of the Spode potterswww.spode.co.uk/template-99.php?page=231¤t_section...l More reference links: http://www.collectorcafe.com/article_archive.asp?article=140&id=1753Spode - the history of the Spode potters www.spode.co.uk/template-99.php?page=231¤t_section...