Backstamps and marks
The word stamped on the back of a piece is a line, a company, or a trademark, and each kind tells you something different. Here is every mark you are likely to meet.
14 marks · 17 datesThe marks
Read these alongside how to identify a pattern, which covers what each mark dates a piece to. Metal, in the last column, is what the mark implies about the material, and it is the fastest way to know whether you are holding plate, sterling, or steel.
| Mark | What it is | Metal |
|---|---|---|
| ONEIDA COMMUNITY LTD | The corporate name the commune became. Incorporated 1880, in force from the first day of 1881, and used until 1935. | Silverplate, later sterling |
| ONEIDA LTD | The name after the 1935 rename, and the one on most of the twentieth century. | Silverplate, sterling, and stainless after 1961 |
| COMMUNITY PLATE | The flagship silverplate line, started at the turn of the twentieth century. The name outlived the plating and still appears on stainless. | Silverplate |
| ONEIDA COMMUNITY PAR PLATE | Plate with extra silver laid where wear happens first: the back of the spoon bowl and the tines of the fork. | Silverplate |
| TUDOR PLATE | The economy plate line. Pieces carry no pattern name on hollow-handle knives, only the mark. | Silverplate |
| NOBILITY PLATE | A separate plate mark sitting below Community. Active through the late 1930s. | Silverplate |
| WM. A. ROGERS | A rival firm of Niagara Falls and Toronto, bought by Oneida in 1929 and run afterward as a lower-priced line. | Silverplate |
| 1881 ROGERS | A Wm. A. Rogers trademark that came with the 1929 purchase. The 1881 is a founding claim, not the year your spoon was made. | Silverplate |
| SIMEON L. & GEORGE H. ROGERS CO. | Absorbed by Wm. A. Rogers in 1918 and carried into Oneida in 1929. | Silverplate |
| HEIRLOOM | A trademark acquired with Wm. A. Rogers in 1929, later attached to the best work: Heirloom sterling, and today Heirloom 18/10 stainless. | Sterling and 18/10 stainless |
| ONEIDACRAFT DELUXE | The mid-tier stainless mark, in use from the turn of the 1960s. Chateau is the pattern most often found under it. | Stainless |
| NORTHLAND | The budget stainless line, frequently made in Japan or Korea. Sometimes stamped Northland by Wm. A. Rogers. | Stainless |
| SANT’ANDREA | The premium foodservice brand, started in 1990, with its own touch marks on the face of the handle rather than the back. | 18/10 stainless |
| DELCO | The budget foodservice mark, run through a subsidiary company. | 18/0 stainless |
Two of these mislead often enough to be worth repeating. 1881 ROGERS is a founding claim owned by a firm Oneida bought in 1929, so the number is not a date of manufacture. And COMMUNITY started as a silverplate line but outlived the plating: the name still appears on stainless patterns made decades after the plate lines closed.
Why there are so many names
Oneida spent a century buying competitors and keeping their trademarks alive as price tiers. Wm. A. Rogers came in 1929 and brought both 1881 Rogers and Heirloom with it. Heirloom went on the best sterling and today marks 18/10 stainless. Northland sat at the bottom, often made in Japan or Korea. Sant’Andrea and Delco served restaurants rather than homes. A single household drawer can hold four of these marks and still be all Oneida.
The company behind the marks
The names change because the company did. This is the sequence, with the dates that matter for dating a piece.
| Year | What happened |
|---|---|
| 1848 | John Humphrey Noyes and about fifty followers settle beside Oneida Creek in central New York. Flatware is nowhere in the plan; the community lives on animal traps, silk thread, and canned fruit. |
| 1877 | Charles Cragin proposes making spoons at the Wallingford branch in Connecticut. Tinned spoons go into production. Corporate histories often date the business to 1880 instead, which is the year of the company rather than the year of the first spoon. |
| 1880 | The community votes to hand its common property to a joint-stock company. Oneida Community Ltd. takes effect on the first day of 1881. |
| 1899 | Silver-plated flatware and hollowware start under the Community Plate name. Sources put the first pattern anywhere from 1899 to 1903, so treat any single year with suspicion. |
| 1912–1914 | Production moves to Sherrill, New York, a town laid out as a factory town, with bonuses for workers who built their own houses. Sterling production begins. |
| 1929 | Oneida buys Wm. A. Rogers Ltd., and with it the 1881 Rogers and Heirloom trademarks. A 1934 federal appeals decision settles that no one company owns the Rogers name outright. |
| 1935 | The company renames itself Oneida Ltd. |
| 1961 | Stainless steel flatware arrives and starts displacing plate. Any Oneida piece stamped STAINLESS was made in 1961 or later, without exception. |
| 1965 | First use of the cube logo. A piece carrying the cube was made in 1965 or later. |
| 1990 | The Sant’Andrea foodservice brand starts. |
| 2004 | Oneida announces the closing of the Sherrill plant and moves production to contract manufacturers abroad. Plants in Juarez, Toluca, Shanghai, and Vercelli close. |
| 2005 | On March 22 the Sherrill plant and its tooling sell to Sherrill Manufacturing, founded by two former Oneida men. Oneida stops production there in May; the plant reopens under the new owner the next day. For about three more years that company keeps making certain high-end patterns for Oneida under contract, which is why a USA stamp does not strictly prove a piece predates 2005. |
| 2006 | Oneida Ltd. and eight subsidiaries file Chapter 11 in March and emerge in September with $170 million of exit financing. Existing shares are wiped out. |
| 2011 | Monomoy Capital Partners buys Oneida Ltd. This was a purchase, not a bankruptcy, and secondary accounts routinely get it wrong. |
| 2012 | Oneida and Anchor Hocking are folded into EveryWare Global, headquartered in Lancaster, Ohio. |
| 2015 | EveryWare Global goes through a prepackaged Chapter 11 of its own. The reorganized business later trades as The Oneida Group. |
| 2021 | On June 3, Lenox Corporation acquires Oneida Consumer LLC and with it the consumer business. Both companies sat in the same investment portfolio at the time. |
A note on the years secondary sources garble. The 2011 change of hands was a purchase by an investment firm, not a bankruptcy; the second bankruptcy belonged to EveryWare Global in 2015. And the start of Community Plate is given as 1899, 1901, 1902, and 1903 depending on who is writing, so no single year is stated here as fact.
What this means for a current pattern
Most of these marks are history. What survives on flatware sold today is Community, Heirloom, and Oneidacraft, used as line names rather than as companies. Each pattern page notes which line mark a pattern carries, and the discontinued archive lists what the plate and sterling marks were attached to before they went quiet.