OF THE SIMILARITY BETWEEN ANTIQUES AND OIL STOCKS—OF THE
CONFOUNDING OF EXPERTS BY FRENCH AND ITALIAN ANTIQUE-FAKERS—AND
OF THE MOST ADVANCED METHODS OF FAKING
The percentage of antiques among the antique-shops of Paris, Rome,
Florence, Berlin, and Vienna is said by some to be about the same as
the percentage of good investments among the oil and mining stocks of
America. Sometimes an antique is easy to detect, and sometimes it is
not so easy.
There are a number of experts who claim to be able to expose a
worm-hole that would deceive any worm in the world; but there are
occasions when groups of the most serious and profound experts become
embroiled over a particular painting or piece of furniture, some
claiming fiercely that the article in question was produced in 1519,
and others maintaining noisily that it was done in 1915. The only
satisfactory way in which such a matter could ever be settled would be
to have a war over it.
Large numbers of experts have also gone into ecstasies over certain
beautiful Old Masters: expert has purchased a painting from expert,
running up the price at each change of hands until its cost is on a par
with that of a new Town Hall; then some low, coarse, non-expert has
come along with an X-ray machine and shown, by X-raying the paint, that
it is so new that its value is somewhat less than that of a dog-house.
The best of the renaissance and primitive and seventeenth century
artists now producing Italian and French antique paintings are full
of quaint conceits for the intriguing (if one may use so coarse an
expression) of experts on paintings. They welcome the cynical and wary
purchasers who start to examine a painting by looking at its back in
order to make sure that the canvas is old. They beam affectionately at
the suspicious buyers who must have a certain number of cracks to the
square inch of surface, who count the fly specks with loving care,
who test the paint with alcohol in order to find out whether it is
new paint or old paint, and who hunt so assiduously for that rich and
mellow golden-brown tone that comes only with age.
A golden-brown glow on a painting is a sign that it was painted back
in those good old roistering, swashbuckling days when the most sincere
fighters and the noisiest drinkers wore lace frills around the bottoms
of their short plush sport-clothes. Fortunately the same beautiful
effect can be obtained by dissolving licorice in water, pouring the
result on the canvas and rubbing it around for a few moments with the
palm of the hand. Very beautiful and realistic fly-speck effects may be
added by dissolving gum arabic in water, coloring the liquid with sepia
and Chinese ink, dipping an ancient toothbrush into it, and spraying
it on the canvas by drawing a match along the toothbrush bristles.
The wisest fly that looked at the result would declare unhesitatingly
that a yearly fly-convention had been held on the painting ever since
Christopher Columbus abandoned the flat-earth theory, and that all the
leading speckers of the fly race had tracked their muddy feet on it at
one time or another. It’s a poor human that can’t beat an insect.
If it were not for these happy devices the antiques now existing in the
world would be arbitrarily limited—a condition of things destructive
to the wide dissemination of culture and dismaying to the Academy
for the Popularization of Antiquities. Fortunately, paintings may be
aged without waiting for years to pass over them. One way is to cook
them in hot ovens. Another is to take an old, decrepit painting and
paint something more interesting on top of it. Or one may take a new
painting, cover the back with glue, and paste an old canvas over it.
Some of the most experienced antiquers carry little bottles of alcohol
in their breast pockets; and when they are investigating a picture with
great care, they slyly produce the bottles and surreptitiously pour
alcohol over it in order to find out whether or not the colors run.
If they run, the picture is new. If they do not run, the picture is
old. So, at least, the experts say. The idea is excellent; but happily
the dealers have learned that if they cover a painting with a sort of
transparent glue, it will resist the action of alcohol and confound the
experts. Also, dealers of intelligence have remedied the unkind fate
that seemingly limited the work done by Old Masters to the paintings
they produced in their lifetimes. What could be simpler and yet more
beneficial to the patron than to add the signature of an Old Master to
a painting and let the patron discover it for himself? Many of the most
priceless Old Masters in existence have reached America in this way,
and many a millionaire’s home would be a gloomier place to-day were it
not for this simple but pleasure-giving little device.
There are certain technical points about antique-collecting in Europe
that are easily picked up by the antique-collector in two or three
years’ time.
Venetian glass, for example, breaks more readily than ordinary glass.
When in doubt about a piece of Venetian glass, strike it one inch from
the base with a small hammer, using a stroke of fourteen foot-ounces to
the square inch. If the glass breaks, it is Venetian.
Then there are Capo di Monte saucers, which, when scaled over the
surface of a smooth body of water, will skip several times more than
an ordinary china saucer. One should pick out a broad lake and scale
all questionable saucers over its surface with an under-arm motion.
A saucer, if genuine Capo di Monte, should skip at least eight times
before sinking. The lake may then be pumped out with a bicycle pump.†
————
† See _From Broad-Axe to Peanut-Roaster_, by Emmet Gilhooly.
V
OF THE SOURCE OF THE WORM-HOLES IN NEAR-ANTIQUE FURNITURE—OF THE
LATEST WORM-HOLE MACHINE—OF THE MODERN METHOD OF PRODUCING
ANCIENT WOOD-CARVINGS IN FIVE MINUTES—AND OF THE UNLIMITED
FURNITURE OWNED BY MARIE ANTOINETTE
The collector of antique French and Italian and other foreign furniture
is to be congratulated upon other benevolent circumstances that prevent
supplies of wonderful old things from approaching exhaustion.
So long as there are any ancient houses in France and Italy, just
so long will the manufacturers of French and Italian antiques have
enough working material of absolute genuineness. This is due to the
fact that the wainscoting and all the concealed woodwork of these
venerable houses have been heartily eaten by many generations of true
worms. Whenever a house is pulled down, therefore, the Old Masters
of furniture-making flock to the scene and acquire large stocks of
truly worm-holed wood. This, when incorporated into the magnificent
chests, tables, sideboards, and other pieces which are destined to
fill the antique-shops of Paris, Rome, and Florence, catches and holds
the eye of the purchaser. It is obvious to any one—or at least to any
amateur—that any piece of furniture which contains such intricate and
symmetrical worm-holes must have been made before the worms started to
bore, and must, therefore, be very ancient.
The old, worm-eaten wainscoting is used to make the shelves and
drawer-bottoms of sideboards which are known as _credenzas_ in Italy
and _crédences_ in France. It is also drawn on for the backs and
bottoms of chests, for picture-frames, for wooden stirrups, and for
almost any beautiful, wonderful old thing Milady or Mimister brings
home to exhibit upon the sitting-room table.
The fronts and tops of chests and sideboards may, however, be made
of new wood and will probably look just as well. For example, the
new wood can be carved even more prettily than the old, and when the
carving is finished, the manufacturer turns over the product to three
or four muscular hirelings whose sole duty is to injure furniture. They
are armed with large sticks of various shapes, and their activities
are limited to chastising the wood with extreme severity. In this way
the chests and sideboards acquire, in a matter of half an hour, the
scratches and indentations for which slow centuries might otherwise be
required. The wood is given the proper color by boiling it with walnut
rind. Or it may be given the peculiar irregularities of great age by
applying nitric acid, which eats into the surface, and then coloring
the marks of the acid with permanganate of potash.
[Illustration: PLATE XI
COLONIAL KITCHEN SINK FROM THE OLD PALAVER THOMPSON MANSION IN
HAVERHILL
The metal work, all done by hand, is in a remarkable state
of preservation. There was no spigot; but here we find an
illustration of the ingenuity of our forefathers. Professor
Kilgallen has come to the conclusion that the water was all
poured in from a bucket and entirely by hand.
]
The new wood, of course, must be carefully worm-holed. The crudest
variety of worm-holing is done with a shotgun. The result looks
sufficiently wormy to suit the most captious worm-hole collector;
but one can always find a Number 10 shot at the bottom of each hole.
The shotgun method, therefore, is not acceptable to members in good
standing in our Society. The worm-hole machine, which is used by
several of the leading Parisian _chineurs_, is a new and excellent
invention. Its front is a square plate with serpentine grooves in
it. When the plate is pressed against a piece of wood and the handle
turned, a number of slender augers push out and make a cluster of
worm-holes. A turn of a lever changes the position of each auger
slightly, so that the worm-hole pattern does not recur.
But the best worm-holes in the world are made in Italy by hand. The
auger with which they are made is bent in an irregular shape; and the
purchaser of a piece of furniture which has been worm-holed with it is
at liberty to thrust wires into the holes in order to investigate their
wormy crookedness.
The most thorough furniture manufacturers, knowing that the careful
collector will rap on the furniture in order to see whether dust falls
from the worm-holes—as would be the case if the hole is the work of a
normal worm—should be careful to fill the holes with wood dust.
In a number of the antique-shops along the Rue Saintes-Pères and the
Boulevard Raspail in Paris, one may see many specimens of carved wooden
panels about a foot and a half long and about five inches wide. Every
one of these has been taken from old châteaux and palaces which have
been recently torn down. This statement is obviously reasonable; for if
it were untrue, practically every château in France would be standing
to-day, whereas nearly all of them have long since been demolished to
provide the great number of wooden panels that have been placed on sale
in the past few years. The panels are attractive and not made by great
pressure—a method sometimes used in France and Italy in making cheap
antiques. Pressure-carvings, as they are called, always show a bent
grain; whereas the small carvings show a severed grain.
But in order to save a few châteaux for tourists to visit, it was
decided to make panels somewhat artificially, so to speak. That would
make a tourist twice happy: he could visit a château and look at the
panels; then he could return to Paris and buy them to take home. Iron
moulds were heated until they were white-hot, and then pressed against
very dry wood. When the moulds were removed and the burnt surface
brushed with steel brushes, the wood had the color and the polish
and the texture of ancient carvings. A dose of Number 10 shot from
the manufacturer’s shotgun supplied the worm-holes for each panel,
after which they were ready to be sold to the travelling public for
about four dollars apiece. Their cost was approximately forty-five
cents—twenty cents for the wood, twenty cents for the labor, and five
cents for the shotgun cartridge, and thus an embarrassing problem was
solved to the contentment of everybody concerned.
Articles as large as mantels for generous fireplaces are made by
this burning method and passed on to eager collectors at prices that
distress the proletariat greatly and cause frequent demands for an
equal distribution of wealth.
There is a wood-carving company in Paris which advertises that it will
be glad to deliver the furniture of any period to antique-dealers at a
moment’s notice.... There are workshops of the Faubourg Saint-Antoine
which produce boule cabinets decorated with birds, beasts, and flowers
of which André-Charles Boule might well have been proud.... There are
places in Auvergne where the best ancient artists in the world turn out
furniture which Parisian dealers later are kind enough to guarantee to
have been owned by Marie Antoinette.
There is a true benevolence in all this. Culture is spread, and many
people otherwise innocent of history learn that Marie Antoinette
furniture is similar to that produced under one of the Louies. It is
quite untrue, however, that she sent it all over to this country in the
Mayflower.