Porcelain marks have been around for thousands of years and are very important in establishing the value, origin and authenticity of pottery and porcelain.
I am working on a system to publish many porcelain marks in a way that makes it possible for researchers to figure out the particular mark they are looking at. This is hard because many marks are not impressed clearly onto the porcelain or have other issues.
It also doesn’t help that even hundreds of years ago potters were busy copying each others work and using marks that we just enough different to avoid legal issues.
I look at books, but most have illustrations which are printed in black and white and/or have been “improved” by the illustrator. None of them are especially helpful in determining if the piece of pottery or porcelain you are holding in your hand is, in fact, a match.
It will take some time to work out a taxonomy and classificatin system. I am hopefull that some of the Web 2.0 techniques will let us create a way for visitors to identify what they have in a visually i ntuitive way.