So far as I know there is nobody making anything that could
be mistaken for my work, and I have no interest in duplicating
anyone else's work, hence there wouldn't be any doubt as to
who made it
You assume that anyone seeing your work would be familier with
you. What about the poor fellow somewhere other than your
neighborhood, who is brought your work for resale, or appraisal,
or the like? He needs to know what the piece is made of and who
made it to accurately evaluate it… May a customer brings in a
piece of yours, recieved as a gift, and want’s another one…
How do you expect to be found?
Artists who don’t sign their work can expect the annonymity that
results.
As to whether you wish to do so, and in what manner, is up to
you. For legal purposes, the only thing the law states is that
IF you represent the work as being of precious metals, you must
mark it as such, and if you mark the piece with it’s precious
metal content, then you must also mark it with a registered
trademark essentially stating who it is that is guaranteeing
that metal quality.
You can, by the way, obtain stamps capable of very delicately
marking a piece of wire. Normally used for earposts, they work
on other uses of that wire as well. Microstamp makes them.
Also, to the best of my knowledge, the law does not actually
require that these marks be permanently stamped on the piece.
The law mostly concerns itself with the markings available to a
consumer at time of purchase. A permanent marking is much to be
preferred, but if the work does not lend itself to stamps, then
I think it’s legal to use a “hang tag” that will stay with the
work until the end consumer gets it. The law says that the
precious metal marking and the trademark marking must be the same
type of mark, so you can’t mix and match, here. But this affords
a reasonable alternative for works that cannot easily be marked.
I’d suggest the use of a decorative enough storage/display/gift
box that the end consumer will want to keep it, and the
descriptive tag be part of that packaging material, as another
way to handle such a situation.
Hope this helps
Peter Rowe
