Maker's Marks

Fort Followers,

In a society where we are constantly bombarded with advertisements, we often lose sight of who makes the products we consume. Most of what we consume is mass-produced, giving a product uniformity. This was not always the case, especially when things are/were made by hand. Since ancient times, people have placed their marks on stuff they made. Once a society produced craft specialists, demand for individual skilled specialists rose. These specialists needed a way to distinguish their work from others. Thus they created their own unique marks, or maker’s marks. 

One way to consider a maker’s mark is to think of them as logos. When we see these logos, we want the product more because it is popular, or it is a quality product. A maker’s mark is just a logo, but in most cases, the product is more labor-intensive compared to the present day. Maker’s marks are still in use today, probably most notably in labor-intensive production like pottery or metalworking, where the maker’s skill is on display. The mark is like the creator’s mark of pride.

Many artifacts found at Fort St. Joseph have these maker’s marks. Pipes such as the one pictured to the left have a maker’s mark of D, which could be part of the maker’s mark TD. This mark can be traced back to a maker in London (Bradley). What is great about these marks is that they allow us to learn more about the artifacts themselves. For example, we can find out where the artifact originated from and then start examining the trade route the artifact may have taken. We can use maker's marks to relatively date sites and examine to how the style changed over time. Smoking pipes from makers like TD were in production for decades or more, so we can see how crafting methods changed and what materials were in use in production (Bradley). Many pipe makers used clay molds and they would push a metal rod into the stem to create a path for the smoke. We can then look and see what method TD used when he was making the pipe, and what techniques he may or may not have used. In some cases, we can find out the clay composition for the pipe, and what minerals were used as temper. This is because some manufacturers used the same materials from the same sources for a long period of time, and we know that this is consistent because of the standardized TD (Bradley). 

Photo credit: Peach State Archaeological Society

If we are researching artifacts with marks like “TD” we might also find that he made different styles of pipes in many different degrees of decoration. The simpler pipes were plain in color with little to no design, with most patterns restricted to the rim. The more elaborate pipes could have fully carved faces which is what we see in the second image. This pipe is a J. A. Coe pipe, and we can tell that because of the maker’s mark along the base of the bowl (Peach State Archaeological Society). The third image is a William Ewart Gladstone pipe and what makes this pipe interesting is that we can see it was made in a mold as there is still some seepage along the face (Peach State Archaeological Society).

Photo credit: Peach State Archaeological Society

It is wonderful when we can find marks like these because it provides us so much more information not only about the artifact, but the entire life cycle of the piece. By placing these artifacts, it helps provide context for the overall site because we can obtain date ranges which can be applied to other ranges we may have from other artifacts.

John

References:

Bradley, C. S. (n.d.). Smoking Pipes for the Archaeologist. Studies in Material Culture Research .

Peach State Archaeological Society https://peachstatearchaeologicalsociety.org/index.php/12-pipes/157-kaolin-clay-trade-pipes