Accessing "manufacturer" field of a device?

I note that the potentially useful “manufacturer” field of devices is not, in fact, a bona fide attribute along the lines of [tt]id[/tt] or [tt]device_type[/tt], etc.

This means that it doesn’t appear to be programmatically accessible through the [tt]luup.devices[/tt] data structure.

Can anyone tell me:

[ol][li]how fields like this, which aren’t attributes or device variables, stored?[/li]
[li]how to get Luup access to the value?[/li][/ol]

I have a ghastly feeling that the answer to (1) might be to do with JSON. Oh dear.