The missing name beneath an object is also part of its history.

A blank label records something. Whoever made the thing was not asked, or was not thought worth recording, or was one of many people whose work got credited to a workshop, a household or nobody at all. That absence is not a gap in the story; it is the story, and it usually says who counted at the time. Silence in a record is evidence.

When you meet an unattributed object, ask why the name went missing rather than assuming accident. Where you can, name the people whose work you pass on. Attribution is easiest at the moment it happens.