Guide
A plain glossary of antiques terms
Antiques vocabulary is mostly precise, not decorative: a hallmark is a legally struck guarantee of metal purity, a backstamp is a factory’s printed or impressed mark, provenance is the documented ownership history, and a marriage is two periods’ parts assembled into one object. Each term below carries a specific claim about what an object is and what it is worth.
Marks and identification
Hallmark
A mark struck into precious metal by an assay office to guarantee its purity — not the maker’s own mark. A full British set carries the standard, the assay office, a date letter and the sponsor. Because the date letter is a legal record rather than a style, a legible hallmark dates a piece to the year, which almost nothing else can do.
Maker’s mark / sponsor’s mark
The maker or the firm that submitted the piece. Struck alongside the hallmark on silver; on ceramics it is usually printed or impressed underneath instead.
Backstamp
The factory mark on the underside of ceramics — printed, impressed or painted. Factories changed theirs regularly, which is why a backstamp often dates a piece to a decade or better.
Registry mark / registered number
A British design-registration mark. The diamond-shaped version runs 1842–1883 and encodes the exact date of registration; after 1884 it becomes a plain “Rd No”. Either way it gives you the earliest possible date for the design.
Impressed, incised, printed
How the mark was applied: pressed in with a stamp, cut with a tool, or transferred as ink. The method itself is dating evidence — a printed mark on a piece whose factory only impressed at that date is a problem.
Condition
Patina
The surface a century of handling, light and oxidation produces. It is not dirt, and it cannot be put back. Removing it — polishing bronze, stripping furniture, scouring silver — is the most common way an owner destroys value before selling.
Crazing
The fine web of cracks in a glaze, from the glaze and body ageing at different rates. Age crazing is irregular and has taken in dirt over time; artificial crazing tends to be too even, with staining sitting on the surface.
Hairline
A crack in the body, not just the glaze. Run a fingernail across it; a hairline catches. It moves value considerably more than crazing does.
Restoration
Repair intended to be invisible. Declared restoration is normal and priced in; undeclared restoration found later is the reason auction houses examine under ultraviolet light.
Marriage
An object assembled from parts of different pieces or periods — a chest with a later top, a clock with a replaced movement. Often perfectly usable, and worth a fraction of an intact example.
Foxing
The brown spotting on old paper and prints, from damp and iron impurities. Common, reversible only in part, and it does move the price of works on paper.
Value and the trade
Provenance
The documented history of ownership: receipts, catalogue entries, letters, house-sale records. It is the one value factor that is entirely outside the object, and on the right piece it can multiply the figure.
Hammer price
What an item sold for when the auctioneer’s hammer fell — before the buyer’s premium is added and before the seller’s commission is taken off. Published results are usually hammer prices, so neither party actually experiences that number.
Buyer’s premium
The auction house’s charge to the buyer, on top of the hammer price. Frequently 25% or more, which is why a hammer price and a shop price are not comparable figures. See the three different values.
Reserve
The confidential minimum the seller will accept. Below it the lot goes unsold, and a lot that has visibly failed is harder to sell next time.
Estimate
The auction house’s expected range. It is a marketing instrument as well as an opinion — set low it attracts bidders, set high it deters them.
Attributed to / in the manner of / after
Catalogue language, and each phrase is a precise and diminishing claim. “By” means the house stands behind the attribution. “Attributed to” means probably. “In the manner of” or “after” means somebody else, working in that style — often much later.
Age
Antique
Conventionally a hundred years old or more. US customs uses that line, and the trade broadly follows it — though “antique” gets applied far more loosely in listings than in catalogues.
Vintage / retro
Not antique. Vintage generally means twenty years or older; retro means made recently in an older style. Neither is a claim about age you can rely on when buying.
Reproduction
A later copy of an earlier form, usually made openly rather than to deceive. It becomes a fake only when it is sold as the original — see how to tell them apart.
Trove identifies antiques from photographs and gives an estimated value range, with the reasoning behind it. Every figure is an AI estimate, not a professional appraisal.
Last updated: 4 August 2026