Spent 6 months trying to date a Victorian teapot by the hallmark alone

I found this little brown teapot at an estate sale in Ohio for $8. It had a mark on the bottom that looked like crossed arrows or something. I spent probably 6 months off and on googling that mark, posting in Facebook groups, all that. Finally last week I stumbled on a blog from a British pottery nerd who said the mark was actually a bird on a branch, not arrows. Turns out it's from a small potter in Staffordshire around 1880. Has anyone else had a maker's mark drive them crazy for way too long?

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andrew_sanchez941d ago

Good lord, six months is the kind of dedication I can totally get behind. I spent a solid year trying to nail down a weird squiggly line on the bottom of a silver locket, turned out it wasn't even a hallmark, just a scratch from a belt buckle. The fact that you stuck with it and actually got an answer from a random blog is honestly kind of impressive. Hope that little teapot is sitting on a shelf looking as smug as it should.