I recently had cause to look at the underside of my parents’ coffee table. They bought a marble top in 1958 or 59 and had at least three bases that it sat on over the years. The lifespan of the bases was probably reduced by the weight of the marble.
Our family name was written on the bottom at the store where they bought it, presumably to mark that particular piece of marble as sold for them to pick up. The misspelling is original. I’m not sure what the pen was, but some kind of marker. It wasn’t Sharpie since that brand didn’t come along until 1964, but it was likely something similar.
Obviously, the underside of a coffee table has not been exposed to weathering. It has been exposed over the years to a fair amount of abrasion, as the top moved back on forth on the base, particularly when someone kept putting his feet on the near edge while sitting on the couch. (There is no video, so I have plausible deniability.) But the writing is still sharp well over 60 years later.
