Many people who ask for pattern identification are confused when I point out that searching for names is often pointless when it comes to German porcelain and ceramics. The background is not easy to explain, hence this rather long page. Not only do we have to cover economic changes over a period of well over two hundred years, but we also have to bear in mind that we are talking about two completely different markets, which were more or less unsynchronised for relatively long periods of time. I hope this page helps to shed some light on this.
In the 1800s, most account books still contained a lot of redundant information in the form of long descriptive passages. Accounting was a tedious task, especially if the business was involved in international trade. Keeping track of stock was inefficient, slow and prone to error. Even more so when the head office had to rely on translated spreadsheets or reports.
Until then, most British or North American companies had served local markets that were growing slowly, and in most cases had product ranges that did not go beyond the bare minimum. This meant that, up to a point, basic accounting and stock control systems worked perfectly most of the time. Put simply, a shovel was a shovel and a barrel was a barrel.
As industrialisation progressed, however, the variety and range of products expanded at a much faster rate than before. More and more manufacturers were producing the same items, resulting in a range of different designs, qualities and prices, so that instead of selling a single type of shovel, hardware stores would display three or more different types. And to ensure that a customer bought a particular product, manufacturers and retailers had to make sure that certain product features were easily recognisable in direct comparison with products of the same type.
You could say that this was the birth of marketing. Of course, certain product groups offered a wide range of different specifications, but when it came to tableware and similar products, the possibilities were somewhat limited. A mug or coffee pot might vary in size, have a smaller or larger handle, or be more durable than others, but that's about it. So manufacturers tried to attract customers with more appealing shapes or decorations by 'naming' their shapes or decorations, relying on good-sounding names that were easy for customers to remember.
However, this created problems with the old forms of accounting, as the number of clerks and accountants needed to run a medium-sized business soon increased, leading to two main schools of thought: some companies maintained price levels but made less profit, while others had to raise prices as they were forced to spread the cost of additional expenses.
Long before large-scale international trade was on their minds, many German manufacturers - based on the oft-quoted "Prussian/German virtues" - had begun to rely on structures that seamlessly integrated everything needed for efficient production and streamlined accounting and inventory management. Not only did this save a lot of money by greatly reducing the number of ledgers and accountants required, it also provided a better overview of workflow, quality assurance and even individual employee efficiency.
It should be noted that this does not mean that German companies reinvented the wheel or were more intelligent than others; it was a combination of factors that led German companies to stumble upon certain practices and then to adapt them more quickly and efficiently than others. And all this at a time when trade relations were steadily increasing.
To outsiders it must have seemed that the Germans had gone mad with numbers and abbreviations. Indeed, there are travelogues by foreign visitors describing German factories as carefully planned, highly efficient, but very monotonous. Every department in a factory was numbered and literally everything, from raw materials or components to the finished product, had its own numerical ID code - including the workers. As a direct result, everything from production lists to work orders became much shorter. Book pages could hold far more information and were quicker to update, read and analyse. In the end, it all added up to lower costs, faster work and increased output.
In some areas this led to partial market dominance. English pottery, for example, suffered greatly under the influence of German goods. The effect was so threatening that the British Parliament passed the Merchandise Act on 1887-08-23 to protect the British market. German imports would henceforth bear a mark of shame, and the infamous "Made in Germany" was born. Faced with a similar dilemma (but not limited to Germany), the United States Congress passed the McKinley Tariff Act on 1890-10-01.
We should bear in mind that this development, which took several decades, was the direct result of two parallel markets (outside/inside Germany), each of which developed in a slightly different way. And it took another couple of decades for the systems we know today to emerge. Nowadays, we simply know that global trade is based on transferable constants, designations that do not change even if the target market uses a completely different language or even alphabet.
Take a close look at the typical barcode labels (e.g. the IAN, EAN-13, or UPC-A type) that you see on almost every item today; they consist mainly of numbers. The reasons for this are, of course, labour/cost efficiency and international readability (along with computer readability, but that's another matter). In other words, the manufacturer creates a unique item number, while it is up to the local stores to create a matching sales description for the item; it does not matter in which language this is done, as the unique item ID remains the same.
So far we have covered one specific aspect of the whole matter, but there was another very good reason why many German factories did not want to use names to describe patterns. Classifying a shape or decoration by number alone was of course much easier than having to use names, and it made no difference if an item was sold locally as "Lilienstrauss" in Germany, "Lily Garden" in England or "Bouquet de lis" in France, as the corresponding number code always remained the same. And so most German manufacturers decided that their catalogues should contain only numbers, with combinations of numbers clearly (and internationally) indicating item, shape and type of decoration.
Of course, this procedure also avoided many secondary problems, as registrations in general were both cumbersome and relatively expensive. Registering a design in Germany was one thing, but German manufacturers would have had to file, prosecute and pay for registrations in every single target state or country. On top of the regular fees for such a process, there was an additional fee for being a foreign producer registering a design. All this paperwork would have meant that factories would have had to secure the services of a local company representative or even a lawyer, and the initial price advantage would have quickly evaporated.
But even naming things was not as simple as it might seem. For example, a particular flower or plant might look different than it does locally due to different genetic settings resulting from evolution on different continents, so using certain names might cause confusion because the name chosen simply does not match what people expect to see. Not to mention that translations can also have unwanted side effects.
For example, a German manufacturer wishing to produce a range of plates featuring foreign birds may find that "Maorischnäpper" sounds fine, but it is doubtful that they have considered the implications of literally having a "New Zealand Tit" on a plate. Worse still, if the potential customer happens to be an Englishman, they may find themselves with a "Tomtit" on their plate, a Yorkshire slang term for faeces. Either way, definitely not something you want on your plate.
The only logical consequence for the German manufacturers was to stick to their rather successful numerical system and leave the dirty work to their importers and distributors. And since most foreign customers (especially in Canada, the UK and the USA) were still used to names, many of these importers and distributors quickly began inventing, using and often registering their own names.
As each importer/distributor had the ability to create their own names, any given decoration, shape or combination of these began to appear under numerous names throughout the world. While a German company would use certain names in Germany, a Canadian company would use different names than a company in the UK or New Zealand. Worse still, distributors on the US West Coast often used and registered different names from companies on the US East Coast, and vice versa. In those days, nobody cared, because each market segment was a separate matter and did not affect other areas or even countries.
With the advent of a truly global marketplace and the internet, we now face the problem that customers, collectors and potential resellers alike seem to believe that every pattern name they search for is the real thing. With the above in mind, we can see that this could not be further from the truth.
Suppose you are trying to sell an item in your hometown of Los Angeles. You searched for a pattern name and finally got a lead from a local retailer's website. But who is to say that a potential customer in Boston will even find your item online? They may be looking for something completely different, as the old catalogue they received as part of their heirloom clearly states a different name.
And the eBay customer in the UK will probably have another name to hand. All more or less legit, but still not definitive and far from official. No matter what sites like Replacements-dot-com want you to believe, the only good thing about it is that they just don't know any better.
The whole thing got quite complicated, and of course some people noticed long ago that quite a few names conflicted with local ones. Many US American collectors and resellers then got into the habit of quoting completely useless item designations, such as the stupid stock codes used by one of my pet peeves, Replacements-dot-com. As if trying to find a way through a home-made mess by relying on yet more codes made up by some stupid US company would help, when it has been proven that the company in question is often not even able to correctly identify local (US American!) marks.
My reluctance to respond to ID requests is based on the above. Any ID I could offer would most likely be the original manufacturer's code, something that has been systematically ignored for years and is now almost impossible to find as a reference, as all those self-proclaimed "experts" have decided to write about, use or promote meaningless names instead.
Even I do not have the resources or archive material to create a database that would contain the correct information. But people should think about the fact that they are creating more confusion by avoiding confrontation and replacing original names with invented nonsense.
And, of course, people should finally accept the fact that many pattern names were (and are) only local identifiers.
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