This page covers the history of various country of origin markings, the "must know" when dealing with items marked as such.
The first real (or enforced) country of origin marking was the term "Made in Germany", based on a decision by the British Parliament, which passed the Merchandise Act on 1887-08-23 to protect the British market from German imports. The Act required all goods from Germany to carry an indelible mark clearly stating "Made in Germany". We now know, of course, that the whole thing backfired because what was originally intended as a branding mark ended up being a free trademark and the epitome of a seal of quality or a guarantee of value for money.
A few years later, especially after the revision of the US McKinley Tariff Act (see below), manufacturers all over the world started to adapt this form of marking. Incidentally, the "Made in" prefix was never a requirement of US import regulations or the McKinley Tariff Act itself.
Foreign marking: On 1890-10-01, the United States Congress passed the McKinley Tariff Act, a bill introduced by the twentyfifth President of the United States, William McKinley. Not only did this act impose the highest tariffs the United States had ever imposed on imports, it also required that all goods imported into the United States, regardless of their country of origin, had to be marked as of foreign origin. This act was revised in two main steps: the first revision was was immediate, replacing the wording that implied the need to use "Foreign" with wording that required the true country of origin, based on the fact that Britain had already forced Germany to use "Made in Germany" on their goods. The second step included the markings used by Japan and Czechoslovakia, as explained below.
Bear in mind that markings or additions that actually read Foreign were later used as a perfectly legal way of avoiding a true country mark when the target country had outlawed the corresponding country of origin. One might immediately conclude that this automatically refers to German items made for export to the United States during the Second World War, but this was rarely the case. For example, West German pottery in the early mid-century modern era was actually marked Foreign for export to countries like Hungary or Bulgaria as Western goods were not well received behind the Iron Curtain, while the USA accepted Foreign-marked imports from the USSR during the Cold War.
So the mere presence of a Foreign mark says absolutely nothing about the age or intended market of an item, in fact these items require intensive research to place them correctly. Do not be fooled by sellers who claim a certain age (or country of origin) simply because of the presence of this mark.
Nippon marking (1891-09-01 until 1921): Japan wanted to comply to the McKinley Tariff Act but somehow had to translate their country name into a form that could be used by Westerners. The original name for what we know as Japan is a combination of the two characters 日 (ni) which resembles "day/sun" and 本 (hon) which resembles "origin/beginning" (hence Land of the Rising Sun). Japanese is a complex language largely built on minimal body language, context and pronunciation, thus different meanings for one and the same term/context exist; 日本 therefore can actually be understood as nihon as well as nippon.
The problem here was that the representation form nihon is not really phonetically correct, a drawback of translating Japanese characters into the Roman alphabet, and would result in many mispronunciations, whereas the term nippon nearly fits the original pronunciation and was therefore preferred. In the year 1921 the USA however decided that Nippon had to be changed into the more commonly known term of Japan, ending what many sellers commonly refer to as Nippon era.
Čechoslovakia et al (1918 until 1921): Following the dire years of the First World War, re-establishing international trade was vital for the newly-founded state of Czechoslovakia. This however required that all goods were correctly marked according to both British and US regulations. Of course, no one in Czechoslovakia had previously thought to specify the spelling of the country's name, so many manufacturers used all kinds of spellings (hyphenated or not, with "v" or "w", etc.) and sometimes even used the letter "Č" (the C-caron, also known as C-hatschek) instead of the normal phonetic "Cz" used in Western Europe and the USA.
Therefore, the US authorities added an amendment to the McKinley Tariff Act, stating that only characters commonly used in the USA would be allowed in names; at the same time, the Board proposed the spelling "Czechoslovakia". The Czechoslovak government not only accepted this, but also tried to ensure that manufacturers were obliged to comply within a very short period of time. However, do not assume that all versions that do not exactly spell "Czechoslovakia" can usually be dated between 1918 and 1921. There are exceptions, as not everyone got the memo in time, so the odd factory may have taken a year or so longer to comply.
Many sources incorrectly state that the former Bohemia was part of Germany for a long time, but this is simply wrong. If you look at the history of Bohemia and the associated Moravia at the time when they belonged to the Austro-Hungarian Empire, you will see that these core regions included German-speaking enclaves (Sudetenland, Germania, Sudetenschlesien, etc.) which lived mainly from agriculture. After the end of the First World War in 1918, Bohemia and Moravia (including the German enclaves) became part of the newly formed state of Czechoslovakia.
Due to the political situation (and diplomatic manoeuvring), the whole situation regarding these territories finally escalated just before mid-1938. Fearing the worst, on 1938-09-30 the British, French and Italian governments (in the absence of Czechoslovak representatives) signed the Munich Agreement, a declaration which separated these areas from Czechoslovakia and officially declared them German territory again. Germany immediately moved troops into the areas (a process that took place between the 1938-10-01 and 1938-10-10), as it was the perfect opportunity to officially deploy troops closer to Germany's eastern border (in preparation for the planned attack on Poland, as the world would later learn).
At that time, many almost finished items marked Czechoslovakia were altered, with the former addition replaced by "Germany" (or even "Deutschland", e.g. on products from the Dallwitz factory). Hence such marked items can be dated between October 1938 (not 1939!) and the end of the war in 1945.
As we are just talking about this area let me add that the former united state of Czechoslovakia on 1993-01-01 split up into the Czech Republic and Slovakia. However, the name Czechoslovakia itself continued to be used in some trademarks for some time after the split, and many sources indicate that the old state name was used until the end of December 1995.
By the end of the Second World War, more than 50 years had passed since the forced introduction of the "Made in Germany" label (see above). Following the creation of two independent German states in October 1949, many Western manufacturers faced a problem. Under economic/quality aspects the reputation of everything marked "Made in Germany" was very high, on the other hand it was known that production in regions influenced by the Soviets was less than adequate. Believing that the division of the two states was only a temporary solution and that a back door should be kept open, many manufacturers in the Federal Republic of Germany thought it would be a good idea to use "West Germany", as it was close enough to the old
Under economic/quality aspects the reputation of everything marked "Made in Germany" was very high, on the other hand it was known that production in regions influenced by the Soviets was less than adequate. Believing that the division of the two states was only a temporary solution and that a back door should be kept open, many manufacturers in the Federal Republic of Germany thought it would be a good idea to use "West Germany", as it was close enough to the old "Germany", but also implied a western world orientation and distanced them from the inferior Soviet-influenced East German side.
Manufacturers in the German Democratic Republic countered by introducing the term "East Germany", setting off a naming contest that only ended with the official German reunification on October 3rd 1990, meaning that all companies that had previously used west/east designations reverted to the term "Made in Germany". However, there is much more to it than that, and many collectors and self-proclaimed experts have managed to spread a lot of misinformation about the subject in an attempt to put their items in a better light. So let us set the record straight:
Bearing in mind the above exceptions, any product marked with any kind of East/West German identifier can actually be dated between 1949 and 1990, but the exact period can only be narrowed down by knowing the specific marking scheme of the manufacturer in question.
There has also been a certain evolution of the mark over time, for example, a certain Western manufacturer used a "(Made in) West Germany" mark earlier than a "(Made in) W.-Germany" mark. Hence one has also got to know the various evolution stages of the addition itself:
As I said, you always have to check the specific timeline for each manufacturer. For example, some factories used "(Made in) West Germany" until 1976, while other manufacturers had long since dropped this in favour of "(Made in) West Germany" or "(Made in) W. Germany". Finally, a small number of West German manufacturers and retailers actually used the abbreviation "BRD" (for "Bundesrepublik Deutschland") or "FRG" (for "Federal Republic of Germany") on their products; rare cases indeed.
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