Criteria
What counts, and what does not
Three tests decide whether an object belongs here. They are applied to every entry, and the reasoning is published on each object’s page so you can disagree with it.
One
It has to be one thing, not a kind of thing
A Brown Betty teapot is a shape anyone may make and call by that name. A Clarks Desert Boot is made by Clarks. Only the second has a birth year to date, because only the second has a single line of production behind it.
This is the rule that removes most of what gets suggested. A brand attached to a category — a maker's “stainless steel cookware” — names a range, not an article. Where a maker invented a form that others later copied, the original still counts: cone filter is a type, the Melitta Cone Filter is a product.
Two
Today's version has to be essentially the original
Same function, same essential form, substitutable in use. Materials and methods may change — hand-forged to drop-forged is fine, and so is a factory moving country. What may not change is what the thing is.
A name carried across genuinely different objects fails, however continuously the name was used.
Three
It may have paused. It may not have been revived
A pause is the same line stopped and started again, with the tooling, the people and the knowledge still in use. Gibson stopped making the single-cutaway Les Paul in 1961 and resumed in 1968; that is a pause, and the Les Paul is continuous from 1952.
A revival is a line that ended and was later re-created from archives, patterns or museum pieces. “Recreated from the original patterns” is evidence for a revival, not against one — it says the knowledge had to be recovered because it had been lost. A revival can be beautiful, accurate, and still not belong here.
War is not a gap. Nearly every manufacturer in a fighting country stopped, so it distinguishes nothing and says nothing about the object.
Dates
Every year carries its evidence
Most origin years are contested by somebody, usually because a maker markets itself from the year the company started rather than the year the object did. Where that is true, both years appear.
- Verified
- Two or more independent sources agree. 44 here
- Claimed
- One source supports it. Usually the maker’s own. 7 here
- Disputed
- The sources disagree, and the competing years are set out on the object’s page. 46 here
Turned away
Objects the rules excluded
These are good objects. They were researched, and they did not qualify. Publishing the rejections is the only way the rules above can be checked.
- Brown Betty Teapot type, not a singular product: anyone may make a Brown Betty, so there is no single lineage to date
- Demeyere Stainless Steel Cookware type, not a singular product
- Hermès Saddle A range, not one product: Hermès makes many saddle models, and 1837 is the year the company was founded rather than the year any one of them was first made.
- Peugeot Coffee Mill heritage revival: manual mill production ended around 1960 and the current line was reintroduced; production was not continuous
- Timex Weekender insufficient evidence