In London during the 1920s every hotel had its own china make and pattern designed by various dinnerware firms in the U.K. and abroad. I recently stumbled into a cache of ledger notations from a china and porcelain distributor that lists where and what each hotel, club and institution had in the way of plates, cups and saucers, according to their respective marks and signatures.
Despite the crudity of ledger pages, the marks — logos by any name — exude a certain design elegance consistent with the era in which they were made.
For more Steven Heller, check out Citizen Designer: Perspectives on Design Responsibility, one of the many Heller titles available at MyDesignShop.com.