ABOUT THE RWCN – Wayfinding through the RWCN IDwiki™


Pattern Identification

For Pattern Identification, click on any Letter in the ABC menu at the top of pages to browse through all the entries arranged alphabetically.

 

 Manufacturers

Select the name of a Manufacturer from the dropdown menu at the top of this page to look for examples by that company. Note that if you're looking for Bailey-Walker it will be under Walker; if you're looking for OPCo it will be under Syracuse. Because there's a website already dedicated to the patterns and topmarks used by Carr China, you might want to look there after you've seen the listings here. 

Iconic Establishments 

Articles written mostly by Larry Paul and compiled by Phillip Lord give an in-depth look at the chosen topics, from restaurants to hotels to airports to sanatoriums.    

Date Codes

Known date codes for manufacturers can be accessed through the drop-down menu on each page.

 

Other Resources 

        • Manufacturers' catalogs, brochures and price lists
        • Backstamp examples grouped by manufacturer: Buffalo, Jackson, Mayer, Shenango, Syracuse
        • Jackson China Book, by James Strano
        • Steve's Cup of the Day, a reformatted version of Steve Aimone's collected cups
        • True West vs. Wallace China – a comparison
        • Links to RW research sources external to this site as well as book recommendations  

Search Function

Searching the RWCN IDwiki™ is easy, just type in a key word or phrase in the Search Box and you'll see the search results returned in the following order:

        • Results with EXACT full word or phrase match in a TITLE will be listed first.
        • Results including ANY search term matches in the TITLE are listed next.
        • Results that include EXACT full word or phrase match in the CONTENT come next.
        • Then, any remaining search results are displayed chronologically by date.

For articles listed in Iconic Establishments, you can choose to enter a key word search in the table Search Box or choose a CATEGORY selection from the Filter drop-down box.  Similarly, for catalogs and the like listed in Other Resources, you can perform a key word search in the table Search Box or use the MANUFACTURER and RESOURCE TYPE drop-down Filters to search within Other Resources.

Searching by monogram – Because some searches are just about impossible when trying to ID a monogram of two letters, in some cases we've added those initials preceded by rwcn. For example, if you're searching for a common combination such as AH or HA, instead enter rwcnAH or rwcnHA into the search field.

History of the RWCN

Two of the banners from the RWCN

It  was in 2000 that the Restaurant Ware Collectors Network® was conceived, born of the vision, skill and generosity of Jackie and Frank Tromble. They were longtime collectors who envisioned the possibilty of creating a community to share finds and research IDs. At that time the primary resources for collectors were the internet and Barbara Conroy's collectors books; there weren't the treasure trove of articles and photos online, and finding something as simple as a matchbook that provided the smoking gun for an ID was cause for celebration. (Although to be clear, for lots of elusive IDs such a piece of ephemera can still be the source of so much joy.)

The RWCN's mascot

With Jackie's blessing, the so-called ID pages were added in 2006 in a team effort led by the late Dick Bond, as well as by Helen Cutshaw, Susan Phillips and Rebecca Leontiev, and reflected the research of dozens of forum members and their willingness to share their photos. A few years later Jackie crafted them into a true wiki: the RWCN IDwiki™. After making the difficult decision to close the site in 2016, Jackie saved the IDwiki but the search function and editing capabilities were lost. And that's where we are today, 20 years after the original site debuted: Jackie has entrusted the IDwiki to Susan and Bec and we are transferring the original articles to a robust interface whose content is easily searched and with the expectation that eventually new pages will be added.