Is all antique brass marked?

In this case I mean do all european pieces such as lighting fixtures from between 1800 to 1900 have maker's marks?

 

No, virtually none do.

It's not really a thing that matters as most pieces are generic utility items.

Up until some time after the introduction of the railways, most stuff was sold within a few miles of where it was made, and made on a fairly small scale. For stuff that did travel further like cloth and ironware, the maker would be meaningless to the end user.

 

AF is essentially right.

I mean that's not to say NOTHING WAS MARKED - Yes, some foundries did mark their brassware - but from what I've seen - this was exceedingly rare. And even if they did mark anything - it wouldn't necessarily mean anything to anybody outside of the foundry, as AF said.

A lot of stuff was made of brass in the old days purely because the steel of the era was extremely prone to rusting - If you didn't coat your knives, your swords, your saws, your axes and other steel products in oil (or paint them in some way), then they would rust REALLY easily.

As a result, a lot of stuff was made of brass just to make it last longer. Candlesticks, doorhandles, bells, gas-jets, lamps, telescopes, binoculars, clocks...the list goes on and on and on.

Unless an item was made by a big or famous company, chances are that most things were not marked purely because nobody saw a NEED to mark them. Everyone knew what brass was and nobody cared whether it was, or wasn't marked. It wasn't like silver or gold, which many countries require hallmarks on, by law.

I have quite a bit of antique and vintage brassware at a home, and almost none of it has any kind of mark on it at all. Except for one very old mortar-and-pestle set which has the numbers '5' and '6' stamped into them (which are the size numbers), and one vintage candlestick, which has the name of the foundry stamped into the base.

Other than that - nothing.

 

Cost and workabiliy determined the use of brass and bronze, not rust. Until the introduction of the Bessemer converter, steel was too expensive to use unless you had to for reasons of strength and hardness. The crucible process produced steel essentially one large bucket full at a time in a lengthy process. Cast and wrought iron were used because they were relatively cheap.