The Vocabulary of Marks  This is a list of words and symbols
that are often found in back-stamps. The dates given are guides,
based on our observations of marks, or are the dates of events
that created the terms or symbols. This is useful only to
indicate the earliest date a term may appear; it does not tell
how recently it may have been used.  Country Names  The McKinley
Tariff Act of 1891 required that the name of the country where
the ceramic was originally made must be printed on each piece.
Sometimes country names were used as part of the mark before
1891; here are the dates of the earliest marks we have seen
using the country name as part of the mark:  Country Date China
ca.1900 Czechoslovakia 1918 Danmark (Danish for Denmark) ca.1850
Denmark ca.1890 England 1880 Finland 1897 France 1867 German
Democratic Republic 1949-1990 Germany 1885 Hungary 1935 Japan
1921 Norge (Norwegian for Norway) 1911 Norway 1935 People's
Republic of China 1949- Portugal 1853 Russia before 1917, after
1991 Soviet Union ca.1919-