The difficulties in identifying smaller furniture makers

Hi All.
I was perusing the furniture listings photos and was intrigued by a lockside chest in the Americanized Eastlake style. Lockside chests were a short-lived phenomenon in popularity peaking during the 1870's and 1880's from those examples that I've seen. This particular example for sale has a rare manufacturer's stencil on the back identifying it as being made by the Mull company in Zanesville, Ohio. It illustrates the challenges in identifying smaller manufacturing companies which may have pasted paper labels on (some of) their pieces while a small number put metal tags, or stamped the maker's name somewhere on the piece. Here's a photo of this particular maker's ID: http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?VISuperSize&item=260625765819 (which will be available temporarily, of course) I have a very nice almost oversized 1890's Oak dresser with side cabinets and a large pivoting central mirror. I was lucky to discover the maker's fragile paper tag on back identifying it as from Karges Furniture in Evansville Indiana, amazingly, a company still in business and one of America's few remaining high-end furniture makers. To create a database of all the known smaller Victorian era makers might take many years but it would sure help in dating and establishing a provenance for some pieces.