Keith Murray Backstamps by Truk10

Having taken on the somewhat daunting role of being the Forum Editor for the Keith Murray Section, I think I need to state right from the outset that I am not an expert on Keith Murray – rather, I’m an enthusiastic amateur and this, combined with a porosity of information on Keith Murray, means that there will inevitably be errors in the posting that I will be making - although I do hope to keep these to a minimum.
In acknowledging the errors will occur, if readers can contact me with correct information I will amend and update the entries so we have a live resource to share and use.

BACKSTAMPS
I thought that this would be a relatively easy place to start as the first question that anyone asks when starting out collecting is “How do you know if a piece of pottery was designed by Keith Murray?”.
The relatively straightforward answer to this “Because it will have his name/initials on it”
As a rule of thumb, this will help you avoid an expensive mistake – although, as we will see later, you could overlook a few bargains in the process.
There are three main backstamps that were used by Wedgwood for Keith Murray designs. They are a very useful way of dating an item as being from the 1930s or the 1940s and, combined with the other markings to the base, can provide some useful information on the item in question.

1. The Full Signature


This was the original mark used when Keith Murray pieces were first produced in 1932 and stayed in use until at least 1940 when the new Wedgwood factory was opened in Barlaston. There are reports of the signature being used after 1940 but this seems to be as a result of worker error rather than intended.
The backstamp features Keith Murray’s full signature, which is underlined with “Wedgwood” and “Made in England” below it. The backstamp is printed in either black, blue or green, (I’ve been told it also appears in brown but have not seen an example) and appears on all the large glazed pieces that he designed. I think that the earlier pieces tend to have a black backstamp while those produced towards the end of the 1930s are more commonly in blue.
Keith Murray pieces that are made from Basalt rather than the normal Queensware base use the same backstamp but this is printed in red so that the signature can be more easily read.



In addition to the Signature mark itself, there is sometimes a stamp to denote the colour of the glaze used, eg., moonstone, matt green, matt straw. It is my view that these colour stamps tend to denote early pieces as they are increasingly uncommon on items produced after 1936.

The use of this mark which just bears Keith Murray’s initials in large block letters above “Wedgwood” and “Made in England” is thought to have begun in 1934. It was initially used on items that were too small to support the full signature stamp such as the cocktail cup in the picture (the handpainted red lettering on the base denotes the decoration pattern on the cocktail cup – in this case platinum banding - and the paintress).
This alternative stamp also appears with “Made in England” as a single line and, although a lot less common than the Full Signature mark, can be found on almost all other items (except the basalt vases) regardless of size. I presume this was simply due to workers using whichever stamp as at hand.
As with the Full Signature backstamp, the use of this stamp ended with the establishment of the Barlaston factory in 1940.

This backstamp is the one most commonly found on Keith Murray pieces in New Zealand. It was introduced in 1940 when the company opened its new factory (which was designed by Keith Murray) in Barlaston – six miles down the road from Etruria. It incorporates Keith Murray’s initials within the main backstamp that Wedgwood used at this time. The stamp denotes the two factories that Wedgwood used from 1940 until 1950 when the Etruria factory was closed and all production moved to Barlaston. The stamp is usually found in blue or a browny grey and appears on all the glazed items that were produced. It is worth noting that Keith Murray’s basalt pieces do not occur with a roundel backstamp – either Wedgewood ceased production of the more expensive basalt vases during the war or they continued using the Full Signature backstamp for these pieces. I tend to think that basalt production had ceased by 1940.
By 1950, production of almost all Keith Murray designed items had ceased and so there are no other Wedgwood backstamps with his signature or initials. Occasionally, Wedgwood revived a Keith Murray design (the last use of a Keith Murray design was in 1982) but these items were either stand-alone pieces or used as parts of other ranges and were not attributed to him.
For example, Keith Murray’s small basalt pedestal bowl was reintroduced in the 1950s and can be found with just the impressed Wedgwood marks.

Coronation Backstamp



A special backstamp was produced for commemorative wear designed for the Coronation of George VI and Queen Elizabeth in 1937, which put his signature below the Wedgwood mark.

Impressed Marks

It is common to find “Wedgwood” and “Made in England” impressed on the base of items in addition to the backstamp – although this is not always the case and impressed marks do not appear on pieces that were slip cast rather than hand thrown.
It is also common to find potters and turners marks on the hand thrown items. These are letters assigned to the workers for quality and piece work purposes (see the “H” on the picture of the matt green vase). On the basalt pieces, it is not uncommon to find the letter incised rather than impressed into the base (see the “X” in the picture of the red backstamp above).
More uncommon is a dating code impressed into the base. The dating code that Wedgwood used at the time was of the form “month number” “potters mark” “last two numbers of year”. So, on the example in the picture, this vase was made in May 1936 by a potter whose mark was “Z”.



Very rarely, as with this example, you can also find the design number for the piece incised on the base as a four number code – in this case 3904. I am unsure what the “E” stands for but, as I have never seen another example of this shape, the code could well relate to it being a trial piece.


Anomalies
While “if it ain’t got a signature, it’s ain’t Keith Murray” is a very good rule of thumb for those starting out, there are always exceptions. The wrong backstamps sometimes got used or workers forgot to backstamp items at all. Here are a couple of examples. The first is a 3808 trumpet vase that was produced from 1932 until after the war. This example has the normal post-1940 Wedgwood stamp rather than the one incorporating Keith Murray’s initials.


The second item is the creamer from the 3901 coffee set which has a Wedgwood stamp that was not used on Keith Murray items.

Hi Collectiques. There were several Keith Murray websites which have disappeared, I can still find one with the following link, or it might just be stored on computer ... This has the same backstamp information (but MUCH less detail) as you have just loaded; plus lots of other information on Keith Murray's glass and other designing.Try it & let me know.

http://www.btinternet.com/~mike595/ceramics.htm

Awesome reference site too - thanks funho1.

Truk10 did all the work on the backstamps - an awesome job I think - I was just uploading the info that he sent me