One reason, apart from artistic motives, why the collector gives the

patina so much consideration is, as we have said, because the patina

nowadays is one of the safest guides in buying antique bronzes. Whilst

the artistic qualities of certain objects may be reproduced with

skill or trickery, patina of a really genuine and entirely convincing

appearance is supposed to be beyond the faker’s art. Our own and other

people’s experience leads us to doubt this, but such, as a matter of

fact, is the common belief among collectors. Faked patina, it is true,

is less transparent and duller than the genuine, and it can easily be

detected by shininess at the points and sharp edges of a bronze where

it is difficult to fix the imitation patina, but, we would repeat,

there are bronzes in Naples and some of the cities of Northern Italy

that have deceived the best connoisseurs, and samples may be seen in

nearly all the important museums of Europe and America. Almost all

works treating specially of metal casting give various methods for

obtaining a proper patina according to the different hues one may

wish to give the bronze. Yet modern methods of colouring and oxidizing

bronze do not seem to satisfy the antiquary and, in consequence, the

faker of antique bronzes. All modern mechanical methods produce fine

colouring without brilliancy, colouring that does not seem to possess

the vibrant quality of old patina, oxidation that appears to be too

superficial to show the depth of colouring peculiar to patina obtained

by the slow process of age. To obtain such an effect the faker resorts

to the most varied and out-of-the-way methods, and when possible tries

to hasten the slow oxidation of age by greasing and smoking the object,

putting it in damp places and treating it with acids. Often the most

varied methods are used in conjunction or alternately with a patience

and persistence worthy of a more honourable cause, but practised with

ever-greater keenness, alas, with the promise of much gain. Some of the

most successful patinas are obtained not only by duly working at the

colouring and oxidation of the metal, but by composing the alloy in

such a way as to favour the production of a convincing patina later on.

Naturally, the differences of the patina of old bronzes depend not

only upon the various conditions to which the work may have been

exposed through age, but also upon the colouring or kind of artificial

oxidation that may have been given it upon leaving the foundry.

[Illustration:

_Photo_ _Alinari_

AN IMITATION OF ROMAN WORK.

Latest part of XIVth Century]

[Illustration:

_Photo_ _Alinari_

AN IMITATION OF 16TH CENTURY WORK.]

Thus whilst an antique bronze brought up from the bottom of the sea may

have the peculiar patina of age acquired under these special conditions

and another statue exposed only to atmospheric oxidation may show

the different hue belonging to the effect of air, there are bronzes

which have been coloured upon leaving the foundry, and even when age

has given brilliance to the patina they bear the characteristics

differentiating the school or artist. The most difficult to imitate are

the excavated Greek, Roman or Etruscan bronzes, especially when the

humidity of the soil or some peculiar condition has produced a kind of

patina possessing the appearance of enamel. Among the artificial

hues of Renaissance bronze, the brownish tint of the Paduan school is

characteristic, and worthy of note are some of the blackish specimens

of Venetian bronze, as well as the whole emporium of samples of the

versatile Florentine school. Some of these patinæ are reproduced

fairly well, and now that Gianbologna and his school are beginning to

be appreciated, we would state that faking is successfully studied to

produce the reddish patina of some of the not always exquisite but yet

invariably interesting little bronzes of Tacca Susini Francavilla and

others.

It was once believed by some collectors that gilded bronze could not

be imitated, that the galvanoplastic method was as recognizable as any

false and badly made coin. We doubt this, for we fail to see why the

old system of gilding with mercury could not be applied to imitations.

It is somewhat slower and more expensive, but the profit, as usual,

makes it worth while in the eyes of the faker. Gilding is certainly

imitated to perfection on modern pieces purporting to be the work of

French artists of the eighteenth century and some of the counterfeits

of Gutierrez’ and Caffieri’s work have even the varnish that was at one

time considered inimitable.

The great progress made in imitating patina, has rendered the

collecting of bronzes one of the most dangerous branches the collector

can choose.

In the case of marble, stone or other hard material that has to be

chiselled, the faker generally starts his work along the lines of

the sculptor, that is to say, he models the original in clay, casts

it in plaster and transfers it to the marble by the usual methods.

Then when this artistic part has been accomplished successfully, the

marble or stone must be given the appearance of antiquity and the

patina belonging to age. This is generally effected by two distinct

operations, one relating to the form, the other to the colour and

the whole peculiar harmonization of tone and polish called patina.

As regards the form, modern sculpture being somewhat too precise

and sharp-edged, the chief aim of the operation is to destroy these

qualities, as well as to confer upon the object the abuse that is

supposed to be traced upon an antique during its long pilgrimage

through the ages. The marble is therefore skilfully chipped here

and there with mallet and chisel, sand and acid are applied to dull

the over-sharp tooling, and sometimes to cause corrosion, etc. The

principle accepted, it is easy to understand that ways of ageing

sculpture are multiplied, and vary according to the illusion the faker

intends to convey. The fact that old Greek and Roman work is not

identical with Renaissance productions in appearance, as the former

are generally excavated while the latter come down to us through a

long succession of owners, is sufficient to show that there are slight

differences which must be taken into consideration.

For colouring marble and stone, a general tone is usually given at

first which is intended to destroy the crudeness of the new material,

especially in the case of marble. One of the most common ways is to

wash the object with water containing a certain quantity of green

vitriol. When applied before the stone has lost its permeability, this

solution penetrates deeply, particularly in marble, and the colouring

is not easily destroyed or washed out by long exposure to atmospheric

action. Some use nitrate of silver also when a different hue is to be

given, but the solution mentioned first, which confers the proper ivory

tone to the marble, is the most common. Naturally, a tone given by

these means is too uniform and monotonous to be taken for the colouring

of old age, so the artist calls his talent and experience into play to

produce the desired variation; there is, in fact, no other teaching but

experience and taste. It is to be noted that in the colouring of stone,

and particularly marble, the artist has an almost complete palette at

his disposal, for in this branch chemistry supplies nearly every hue

possible.

We may remark by the way that the art of colouring marble was already

well understood in the days of ancient Greece, and it is a fact

that more than one statue of that period shows signs of colouring

wonderfully preserved through the ages. In Italy, where marble

dyeing is still a flourishing art, it is done with very few colours:

verdigris, gamboge, dragon’s-blood, cochineal, redwood and logwood.

Nearly all vegetable dyes are suitable, and many coal-tar colours,

if properly used, give a very fast and beautiful colour to marble.

It is essential for the solution of all dyes to be made with alcohol

or ether, and only such anilines may be employed as are soluble in

fat. Some solutions may be applied direct to the marble, whatever its

temperature; others require the heating of the marble, to increase its

permeability and consequent faculty of imbibing the colouring solution.

The quality and condition of the marble must also be taken into

consideration. If the marble has not been polished properly, or has

been touched with greasy hands, a patchy effect or stains will result.

Rubbing with flannel and the moderate use of encaustic, give the

finishing touches, when the character of the patina requires the shiny

effect so often seen in old marbles.

Objects sculptured in wood represent no change of technique for the

forger of antiques as far as the carving is concerned. The forger’s

ability to imitate the work of an old master is purely artistic, and

cannot, of course, be achieved by any special method; but the art of

giving the object a convincing appearance of age is fairly mechanical,

depending upon the use of alkali, permanganate of potash and other

substances. The process being somewhat complex and common, as a matter

of fact, to all kinds of wood carving, it will be given in detail

when imitation antique furniture and the methods of producing it are

described; faked furniture being, perhaps, one of the most productive

branches of the obscure trade of counterfeit antiques. Sometimes

artistic figures or bas-reliefs in wood are either coloured or gilded.

In the case of polychromatic work, the wood is generally coated with a

plaster preparation to receive the colour, and the technique for ageing

or giving a patina is that already described for stucco or clay work;

in the case of gilding, the appearance of age is given to the new gold

by colour veiling, also liquorice juice and burnt paper are used with

advantage applied to the gold with a soft brush.

Ivory work too, which represents one of the most dangerous fields to

neophytic enterprise, requires no special technique in counterfeiting

as far as the artistic creation is concerned. It must also be tempting

to the carver as a material, for certain naïve effects of primitive

art seem aided by the essential qualities of the ivory, its fibrous

constitution in particular. One may safely say that there is nowadays

hardly a single genuine Byzantine Christ; there are, however, plenty on

the market of course.

The old cracks of antique ivory are very easily imitated. There is

more than one method for producing them, the most common is to plunge

the piece into boiling water and then dry quickly before a fire.

The operation can of course be repeated until the desired effect is

attained. Here also smoke and tobacco-juice can perform miracles.

Sometimes ivory pieces are placed in a fermenting heap of fertilizer or

wet hay. The methods are, in fact, most varied, and an inventive spirit

seems of great assistance to the faker in devising new schemes every

day.

We now come to the last class of this chapter, ceroplastics, which

includes all forms of modelled wax, small bas-reliefs supposed to have

been the originals of _plaquettes_, little family portraits in coloured

wax, etc. In this branch, patina and complicated methods to attain an

appearance of age hardly come into consideration, a mere touch of the

hand is at times sufficient to stain the wax, and work of this kind

takes the colouring so readily after it is modelled that no craft

is needed in imitating old wax work, provided the artist is able to

imitate the antique handiwork. Besides, wax portraits have been for the

most part kept under glass and have come down to us as fresh as though

made yesterday, not only those of a century or two ago but also those

that have reached a most respectable centennial age. Wax work is one of

the easiest to imitate and one of the most difficult to detect when

imitated. We are therefore inclined to advise the freshman collector to

abstain from buying this kind of work, unless irrefutable documentary

evidence is offered in the shape of a well-authenticated pedigree of

the work.

CHAPTER XXI

FAKED POTTERY

Faked pottery--Old unglazed types--Artistic and scientific

interest in pottery--Oriental glazed pottery--Greek and

Etruscan half-glazed vases--Faience and its various types--

Italian factories, Cafaggiolo, Urbino, etc.--Iridescent glazes,

Hispano-Moresque, Deruta and Gubbio--French pottery--Faked

Palissy and imitations of Henri II--Other types of French

faience--China, the old and modern composition of china--

Various ways of faking china of good marks--Half-faked pieces

--Blunders in marks--Glasses and enamels.

Pottery presents one of the richest and most varied fields for

imitation and faking. The endless types and specialities of this class

seem to have spurred the versatile genius of the imitator.

Broadly speaking, and age apart, pottery may be divided into two

classes: one in which glazing does not appear, and one in which this

important element of ceramics lends an entirely different character to

the product.

The first class more especially, if not exclusively, may be grouped

into two types according to character: those that interest the

scientist in particular, and those that come more into the domain of

the artist and art lover. It is of course understood that there is no

definite line of demarcation between the two.

Faking, however, with a great spirit of impartiality, makes no

distinctions and is ready to meet its clients on the scientific or

artistic field, and fully prepared to accommodate the scientist with an

artistic bent or the artist possessing the learned propensities of the

historian.

Thus Mexican idols and Peruvian pottery, as well as the productions

of savage tribes, are imitated and copied with the same interest as

the unglazed vases of Samos, Greek clay urns and Roman lamps. What

regulates the increase of the forger’s activities and spurs his genius

is, as we have said, the demand for an article and its price.

There is nothing surprising then in the fact that some rather

indifferent types of pottery of savage tribes, or incomplete aboriginal

specimens, should have been faked as though they presented the interest

of a _chef-d’œuvre_. Not altogether of this class, but certainly of

limited interest so far as art is concerned, are the Mexican articles

which have been among the most exploited by those who know that these

kinds of relics are in great demand by scientists as well as collectors

who have a passion for specialities.

In the Exhibition of 1878, a group of scientists put the incautious

upon their guard by exhibiting a whole series of faked Mexican idols,

pottery and so forth. But as the articles, especially at that time,

were in great vogue, the warning was not sufficient for specialists and

collectors, and the show of faked Mexican art proved such a success

that it stirred the honesty or cynicism, we hardly know which, of

a Parisian dealer who conceived the notion to advertise his wares:

“Forgeries of Mexican idols, 5-25 francs.”

Unglazed Oriental and Græco-Roman pottery, with its fine forms and

decorative character, has not only proved an attraction to the

collector but very tempting to the faker who finds no great difficulty

in imitating it. The way to render such pottery antique-looking is

easy. Acids may play their part here too, but they are hardly necessary

as the porous nature of the clay makes it able to absorb any kind of

hue, tone and dirt if buried in specially prepared ground or in a bed

of fertilizer.

Curiously enough from one point of view, the imitation of this early

art generally flourishes on the very spot where the originals are

excavated, and still more odd is it that on more than one occasion

those duped were the very ones supposed to be good connoisseurs and

who took direct interest in the excavations. Thus it is that there

is an abundance of faked Samos, Rhodes and other specimens, in

collections now housed in museums. A superficial inspection of the

Cesnola collection in the Metropolitan Museum of New York, ought to be

sufficient to prove that even connoisseurs as good as Cesnola, are not

quite safe in this speciality against the trickery of modern imitators.

With Greek, Campanian or Etruscan pottery that bears a peculiar polish

or glazing the nature of which is still a mystery to ceramists the

case is somewhat different; good imitations are rare. Naturally there

cannot be included among convincing imitations those upon which a lead

glaze has been used, as such imitations are covered with a thick layer

of shining glaze and are only intended for veriest neophytes who have

presumably never seen an original. Successful imitations are either

finished with a very thin and non-shining glaze or an encaustic polish.

To ascertain whether encaustic has been used, one has only to rub the

piece with a cloth soaked in benzine, which will soon turn it opaque.

In the pottery museum of Sèvres there is an interesting series of

faked Greek and Etruscan vases, urns, etc. It comprises some good

specimens of the work of Touchard, an imitator flourishing about the

year 1835, other pieces by the Giustiniani of Naples, and some of the

most successful fakes of this particular kind of pottery, the pieces

by Krieg from the Rheinzabern factory. These pieces were sold to the

Sèvres Museum as genuine, by a Bavarian, in the year 1837.

We are told that a good method in imitating Etruscan pottery is to work

with _engobe_, adding a well-ground _frit_ to the _barbotine_ that

contains the elements of a glaze. To our knowledge all imitations of

this kind are wanting in appearance and it is safe to assert that they

could hardly receive serious consideration from a true connoisseur.

As regards glazed Oriental ceramics, there are to be noted some

good imitations of Persian work and, above all, imitations of the

characteristic pottery of Rhodes. Factories for these ceramics are

almost everywhere. Perhaps the best imitations come from a factory in

Paris. Imitations from this factory have succeeded in deceiving more

than one connoisseur. A well-known curator of a Berlin museum bought

one of these samples as genuine, paying eighty pounds for it, and an

antiquary of Florence, quite a specialist in ceramics, very nearly

committed the same mistake, but by good luck he was warned by a friend

who had been taught by hard experience that this Oriental pottery is a

product of very Western origin. Curiously enough the manufacturers do

not sell their produce for anything but imitations; however, through

the usual frauds in which the market in antiques abounds, these pieces

are evidently palmed off on unwary collectors outside France. Oriental

pottery is usually so well preserved, thanks to its hard glaze, that

the faker is spared all complicated processes to give the piece an

appearance of age.

The glazed work of Hispano-Moresque pottery presents a more or less

successful field to imitators. The lustrous glaze of various hues does

not seem to offer difficulties to the modern ceramist, who has learned

how to use the mysterious co-operation of smoke in the so-called muffle

glaze. Yet when confronted with originals, which are becoming rarer and

rarer in the market every day, the best of imitations leaves room for

meditation as the genuine is usually a very uncomfortable neighbour to

the counterfeit.

The Italian Renaissance with its various and interesting types has

yielded a fine crop of imitations. In fact plagiarism was already

rampant when the old factories, now extinct, were in full activity.

Thus on more than one occasion Faenza has copied Cafaggiolo, and the

models of Urbino, Pesaro and Casteldurante are often interchanged,

while the factory of Savona seems to have blended its unmistakable

individuality with the models of all the most successful factories.

Cafaggiolo, Gubbio and Derutha are perhaps the types of old Italian

pottery to which the faker has given preference. There are some modern

imitations of Cafaggiolo made by a ceramist of Florence so well done

that they have deceived the best connoisseurs of Paris and Berlin. But

for the fact that we have pledged ourselves to point out the sins

and not the sinners or their victims, we could enumerate a rather

interesting list of illustrious victims to this clever imitator of

Cafaggiolo, who is still at work in Florence and more dangerous every

day by reason of the perfecting of his deceitful art.

There are also old imitations of Cafaggiolo, made by the Sicilian

factory of Caltagirone, and if one thing surprises us more than another

it is that good collectors should buy this type freely as genuine. They

are apparently blind to the grossness of the imitation and above all

to its dark, dirty blue which has nothing in common with the beautiful

colour of a genuine Cafaggiolo.

Another cherished type offering great enticement to the Italian faker,

even though not imitated successfully enough to take in the real

expert, is the work of Della Robbia. Imitations of this work, copies

from good originals and honestly sold as such, are to be seen at one of

the most important potteries of Florence, Cantagalli, a firm of almost

historical reputation. Being intended to be sold as reproductions,

copies or imitations, no patina is given to these.

It is not only in Italy that Italian faience has been freely imitated

but also in other countries, particularly France. Among the successful

imitators we may quote Joseph Devers, who made such good imitations of

Italian faience that he had the honour to sell some of his specimens

to the Sèvres Museum in 1851. Looking now at these imitations of Della

Robbia, made so successfully by Devers in 1851, one wonders how they

could have been taken for genuine by experienced connoisseurs.

The lustre work of Maestro Giorgio Andreoli and Derutha has been

imitated by many factories, but, notwithstanding the efforts put forth

and the progress made in discovering the secret of lustrous glazing,

the imitations, especially of Maestro Giorgio, are deficient. In the

Gubbio work of the best epoch a special firing must have been used,

especially for the red hue, which is so original and characteristic

that it seems to defy imitation. That the Maestro Giorgios must have

been glazed at a low temperature, at any rate for the production of the

iridescent effect of the colours, may be concluded from an incident

that occurred in Gubbio years ago. On the spot where Maestro Giorgio

is supposed to have had his furnace for firing his masterpieces, some

debris of fine Gubbio work was found. By chance a woman put one of

these pieces that had apparently not received the last firing for the

iridescent hue into the warming pan with which she was warming her

hands, and the moderate heat of the ashes was sufficient to produce the

iridescent effect. Imitators of this kind of work use various methods,

but one of the most common is muffled glaze, specially prepared and

aided by smoke which envelopes the piece when incandescent and the

glaze about to melt.

In France the hard-glazed work of Palissy was naturally an incentive to

the imitator’s versatile aptitude, and later on to the faker’s. Being

as esteemed for his work, as ill-treated for his religious convictions,

Palissy had many imitators in his own time, mostly among his pupils or

enthusiastic followers. However, Palissy died in the Bastille without

revealing the secret of his glaze or the composition of his clay, so

even his followers could only grope in the dark, to use the expression

by which Palissy defined his long and arduous research, before he

discovered the secret of his marvellous pottery. Perhaps because

plagiarists are, after all, always plagiarists, the fact remains that

none of the sixteenth and seventeenth-century imitators reached the

level of the master.

However, false Palissys are legion now. They are of all kinds and the

originals being now practically off the market, museums, as usual,

abounding in pseudo-Palissys, so a comparison with an original is not

always possible.

Apart from his immediate followers, Palissy was copied and imitated

at Avon near Fontainebleau in the seventeenth century during Louis

XIII reign. Demmin, a real authority on Palissy ceramics, mentions

many false Palissys now in museums, some of them regular _pastiches_,

suggested from well-known prints of a later date than Palissy.

According to Demmin, some of these pieces are in the Victoria and

Albert Museum, the motives of the composition, old-fashioned gardens,

being taken from engravings in the style of Lenotre, possibly dating

between 1603 and 1638.

In modern times there are to be noted imitations by Alfred Corplet,

a restorer of pottery who filled the market after the year 1852 with

passable imitations, sold as such, of Palissy work. For a long time

he had been a restorer of broken and damaged Palissy work and thus he

had had opportunity to study the work of the master closely, and at

one time his imitations fetched high prices. A. M. Pull also imitated

Palissy work about the year 1878, as well as Barbizet Brothers, of

whom a _plat à reptiles_ is kept in the Sèvres Museum. Some firms even

reproduce sea-fish which are never found on genuine Palissys, as the

master only moulded such animals and fish as he found in the environs

of Paris.

There are many fakers who still love to imitate the work of Palissy,

and if we may give advice to the inexperienced collector we would say:

“Don’t go after Palissys nowadays, as a find in this line is almost an

impossibility; good originals are either kept in well-known collections

or jealously guarded in museums.”

Henry II faience, the technique of which is as much a mystery as

Bernard Palissy’s glaze, has also been imitated, but, with the

exception of a few specimens, the imitations are so coarse that they

could hardly be dangerous even to the neophyte who had perchance some

slight acquaintance with originals. As in the case of Palissy, however,

Henry II ceramics do not abound on the market and such a thing as a

find is not to be hoped for.

More common are the imitations of Rouen, Moustiers, down to the

ceramics of the Revolution. The latter were at one time in such demand

that a very commercial type was produced which can be imitated, of

course, with ease. In this field also, therefore, do not get excited

too quickly over some truculent subject with the conspicuous date

of the Terror. Naturally among these subjects, the _assiettes au

confesseur_ and _à la guillotine_, depicting the execution of Louis

XVI, are too tempting to forgers not to be given a certain preference

among the faked pottery of the Revolution.

We would point out, further, that the pottery of all parts of the world

has invariably been faked or imitated, as soon as a promise of success

was presented to the imitator and of gain to the faker, but it is not

the purpose of this work to make a long exposition of the countless

types of faking, which would considerably increase its bulk and risk

monotony by an endless list of names and almost identical facts with

the usual dramatis personæ--the cheater and the cheated.

To give an appearance of age to pottery, especially glazed pottery,

there are various methods, as we have already said.

Sometimes it is not only a question of determining whether an object is

genuine or not, but as pottery is apt to be one of the most restored

articles of antiquity offered to the collector, the art lover must

be acquainted with the means of detecting which parts of a piece of

pottery have been restored, often over-restored. There are two ways of

restoring pottery where parts are missing. One is to make the missing

part in clay, bake it, and glaze and colour it to imitate the genuine

part of the object. When this is done the new part is cemented to the

old, and the piece is supposed to have been only broken and mended, a

fact which does not lessen the value of the object in the eyes of the

collector so much as incompleteness would. As this operation is an

extremely difficult one which only a few specialists can perform--there

is a Florentine ceramist who does it to perfection--and very expensive

as well, only really fine pieces of pottery are restored in this way as

a rule. Ordinary pieces are repaired as follows. The fragments of the

object are carefully cemented together and the missing parts are then

supplied with plaster. Some use plaster mixed with glue, others some

similar composition, in fact any soft substance will do if it will

harden after it has been modelled and properly shaped. When the missing

parts have been filled in and carefully polished with sand-paper, they

are prepared for oil paint with a light coating of a weak solution of

glue. After this the artist paints in the missing pattern with oil

colours and a brush, copying from the original parts of the object.

This finished, the glaze is imitated by a coat of varnish.

Incredible as it may sound, in the hands of a clever artist this rather

clumsy method produces an almost complete illusion. It is, however,

easy to ascertain what parts have been repaired. The new parts are

warmer to the touch than the glazed pottery, and they will also smell

of turpentine or oil paint. Should an old mending have lost all smell,

the heat of the hand is sufficient to revive it. Place your finger for

a time on the part you suspect, and then smell it and you will be able

to detect whether the part has been repainted with oil colours. A piece

repaired by the other method is naturally more difficult to detect; an

experienced eye, however, will notice some slight differences in colour

and form between the old and the new parts, and sometimes the join is

not quite perfect, a defect that is often remedied by filling in the

crack with a mastic imitating the glazed ground of the piece. This

rarely occurs, however, as a good repairer can generally calculate to a

nicety the shrinkage of the part to be added and makes such a neat and

perfect fit that only an experienced eye can detect it.

In the case of a purely modern imitation, the faker’s art consists,

as usual, in giving the piece a convincing appearance of age, once

the actual making has been performed. This is generally effected by

exposure to apparent ill-usage, by greasing and smoking the object,

then cleaning it and repeating the operation over and over again till

the dirt has penetrated into all the cracks, or by burying it in a

manure-heap and letting it remain till it has lost all freshness. There

are also chemical ways by which the glaze is eaten and its composition

altered. It is a fact that fluoric acid readily eats the glaze just

as it dissolves glass, and under certain circumstances the lead in

the glaze under the form of silicate changes under the action of

hydrosulphuric acid.

Cracks or a regular network of _craquelage_ are generally produced

on new ceramics by the same principle as they are obtained on oil

paintings, namely, by producing artificially a difference in the

shrinkage capacity of two superimposed layers. In oil painting it is

the layer of pigment and of varnish, in the case of pottery the two

layers are represented by the baked clay and the glaze. If the clay

has a smaller shrinkage than the glaze, in the second firing of the

piece to melt the glaze, the latter will dry in a network of cracks

like those on Chinese or Japanese vases, which are reproduced by this

method. Reversing the game, the glaze peels off here and there in

drying and produces the imperfections sometimes desired on imitations

of old and damaged pottery.

An artificial disproportion between the shrinkage of the clay and

the glaze is usually obtained by modifying the quality of either the

one or the other. Does the clay shrink more in the firing than is

desired, the ceramist generally mixes it with non-shrinking elements

such as powdered brick, or even another kind of clay which he knows

must shrink less on account of its composition, although it may not

be suitable in colour and quality. By this same modification of the

composition the shrinkage of the glaze is increased or diminished.

Glazes are generally composed of a combination of silex, furnished by

sand, and oxide of lead with the addition of some flux such as borax.

With an increased quantity of silex in the composition of the glaze the

shrinkage capacity is diminished. Consequently a predominance of the

other elements, lead, flux, etc., produces the opposite effect, namely,

giving the glaze a greater shrinkage capacity. Some workmen prefer to

modify the quality of the clay to obtain the desired _craquelage_,

others find it more practical to modify the glaze.

A full account of faked china would probably fill a bulky volume. It

may be taken for granted that every kind of artistic china worth

imitating has tempted the faker, with disastrous results to the unwary

collector. We have mentioned some of the most noted forgeries of

faience, merely to show what a happy hunting-ground ceramics have been

to the faker of all times, and with china this is doubly the case. From

the early attempts of Bottger, those rare specimens of rare china, down

to almost modern samples of Sèvres there has been a long succession of

types that have kept generations of fakers and imitators incessantly

busy.

* * * * *

Curiously enough and with no intention of cheating, as far as china

is concerned, noted factories have themselves greatly added to

the confusion between originals and copies by becoming their own

plagiarists, as it were, by imitating old kinds. Thus the Meissen

factory now puts upon the market types of old Dresden very satisfactory

to people not intimately familiar with the fine old models of

the factory. The same has been done at Sèvres, Doccia and other

factories. Then, too, in some cases the plagiarism is furnished with

distinguishing marks that have increased the confusion--for the

neophyte collector, be it understood.

It is well known, for instance, that before closing its doors towards

the end of the eighteenth century, the Capodimonte factory sold all

the models of the factory to Ginori’s noted china works at Doccia, and

together with the models the right to use the N surmounted by a crown

which was the Capodimonte factory mark. Ginori’s factory has ever since

reproduced imitation Capodimonte with the mark of the Royal Neapolitan

factory. Of course the pieces may be sold by the firm as Ginori ware

and not as Capodimonte, but once on the market they are sure to come

into the possession of some unscrupulous dealer who will palm them off

as Capodimonte.

A good connoisseur, however, can tell, almost at sight, the real

Capodimonte from the ones Ginori’s factory has been turning out for

more than a century. The latter are not so fine in form or colour,

and although made from the same mould are not so well finished and

retouched as the real Capodimonte.

Apart from this, a large contribution to imitations of highly reputed

china is made by smaller factories that find it convenient and

profitable to copy pieces of celebrated marks. Some of these factories

even go so far as to imitate the mark, rendering the deception perfect.

There is another form of deceit in the market for artistic china,

peculiar to this particular branch. Many factories are in the habit

of disposing of such artistic pieces as are not considered altogether

up to the reputation of the factory. These pieces are often bought by

clever workmen who embellish them with skill and patience, and then

sell them profitably. If the mark is missing it is added with muffled

colours. To obviate this irregularity some of the best factories either

erase the mark on the wheel, or cut certain lines in the glaze which

indicate that the piece is genuine but not recognized by the factory

as up to its standard of artistic value. Of course even a moderately

expert collector knows the indelible sign made over the genuine mark,

but there, nevertheless, seem to be people who buy such pieces under

the impression that they are genuine first-rate Dresden, whereas no

other claim can be made than that the white background and the mark are

authentic, both baked _a gran fuoco_ as the decoration is generally

muffled work and can be executed by any skilled workman who has built

a muffle in his own house. Nowadays defective pieces are destroyed by

reputable firms; but years ago they were not only sold off, but even

given to the very factory men, who took them home, decorated them and

put them on the market as genuine pieces. Some of these curious fakes

are naturally almost as good as the genuine article, being at times

the work of the same artist and the defect of the first firing is not

always visible as a slight curve in a dish, or a tiny speck in the

glaze of a vase, is a sufficient blemish for the piece to be thrown

aside by the factory.

Where the faker does not always display his usual sharpness is in

the falsification of marks of noted factories. He is apt to make

gross mistakes by copying a mark from an original without knowing the

historical characteristics of the marks of certain factories, their

peculiarities and eventual changes. Take, for instance, the Sèvres

mark. It is known that instead of dating the pieces in figures, the

Sèvres factory began in the year 1753 to mark the pieces with an

A between the entwined initials of the King’s name, and that each

successive year was marked by the French alphabet till the letter Z was

reached in 1776, after which the alphabet was repeated again, doubling

each letter, thus:--

1753 A

1776 Z

1777 AA

1793 ZZ

It is, however, not unusual to see a faked piece of Sèvres imitating

the work of the end of the eighteenth century wrongly marked as to

date, the faker having evidently copied the mark from an original,

unaware that it represented a date as well. This incredible ignorance

can only be explained by the fact that many of these clever imitators,

are artists altogether unacquainted with any information outside their

imitative art. There are also other difficulties in the imitation of

Sèvres and its marks, more especially the pieces of the above series,

of which the faker appears to be unaware. Beside the factory mark, in

the alphabet series particularly, there is always the special mark of

the artist who did the decoration. These marks are generally not very

conspicuous, initials, dots, lines, etc., and belong to specialists,

miniature portrait painters, landscapists or simple decorators. By

copying the old marks mechanically without knowing the information

carried by the artist’s initials or marks, the faker is liable to

attribute a piece of faked landscape painting to a portraitist and vice

versa. Errors of this kind are more common than is generally supposed.

In faked china there is no question of patina or devices by which to

confer an appearance of age to the piece, nor of artificial breakages

for, by a freak of connoisseurship and contrary to faience, repaired

china has lost in a great many cases all artistic and monetary value.

We now turn to glassware and enamels as bearing a certain affinity in

the domain of faked art and antiquities with the glazed pottery already

illustrated.

The museum of Saint-Germain contains specimens of faked Roman glass

with iridescent effect produced by the queer scheme of sticking fish

scales to one side, which as every one knows are iridescent. A most

naïve form of faking to which later progress in the grand and artistic

profession of duping unwise collectors hardly renders it necessary for

imitators to have recourse.

Phœnician glass, the little scent bottles, the so-called lachrymatories

or tear-bottles, furnish a large source of profit to the faker. They

do not command high prices, and appeal to the less fastidious class of

collectors, tourists, and are sure of finding purchasers. Interment in

earth or manure gives the desired iridescent quality to the glass in

time.

From these antique types we will proceed to others of more recent times

which demand more care and skill to imitate, not so much on account

of the art as the peculiar defects of certain kinds. While Cologne

distinguishes herself with imitations of specimens of old glass, the

so-called product of excavation, and other cities of Germany reproduce

old national types, Italy has revived old Murano with a certain amount

of success, as well as various kinds of Quattrocento and later samples.

These imitations are not always made with the intention to deceive and

their success depends upon the class of collector. He who has perfected

his taste finds that although they may approximate to the old originals

materially, artistically they are wanting. The excess of precision that

belongs to modern reproductions somewhat lessens the artistic effect

and forms one of the salient differences between old and new.

But these after all are not dangerous, they represent the cabotage on

the sea of deceit; there are also fine pieces of real artistic value

that are imitated by artists of every nation such as old Bohemian

_chefs-d’œuvre_, Murano chandeliers, the latter sometimes composed of

old and modern parts.

Cut glass is another branch in which the skilful imitator has

triumphed. The work of Valerio Belli and others is so well imitated

that even the best connoisseurs are deceived.

With regard to enamels we would repeat the usual refrain, do not buy

them until you know whence they come, and until you have traced at

least two or three centuries of well-authenticated pedigree.

There are ordinary imitations in the antique market which are quite

easily distinguished, but there are others, regular _chefs-d’œuvre_

of art and craft, that defy and have, in fact, defied experience and

knowledge.

Not all imitations are by Laudin or Noailher, whose work may be of

interest to the accommodating taste of lovers of imitations, but there

are products of a higher grade, unfortunately for collectors and

museums, and these are not sold as imitations, but good round sums have

been paid for them and they have, in a way, ruined the reputation of

more than one collector and expert.

The technique of the work is identical with that of the past, and

the process for giving an appearance of age very much resembles that

already described in this chapter, though there are some fakers

who claim to have found a patina that cannot be dissolved, being

incorporated with the enamel as a glaze obtained in the second firing.

The many lawsuits and summonses at the Courts with respect to the

buying and selling of counterfeit enamels, are ample proof that faking

is rampant also, in this interesting branch of art collecting.

It suffices to say that among the illustrious victims of faked enamels

there is to be included the elder Baron Rothschild, or _le Baron

Alphonse_ as he was briefly called among antiquaries.

The first of his bad experiences in faked enamel was revealed to the

wealthy Baron by Mr. Mannheim, one of the finest and most honest

connoisseurs of Paris, then taking his first steps in the traffic

with antiques. From the first, Mannheim had an excellent eye and he

discovered that a place of honour was being given to a false piece in

Baron Alphonse’s rare series of choicest enamels. At first he did not

dare to reveal the secret, but after having gained the certitude that

not only the one piece, but others also, of the collection were more or

less clever fakes, he took the opportunity to speak that was offered

one day by the Baron’s praise of this fine piece of enamel.

At first the Baron was of course obstinate in his unbelief, but upon

a final test and the opinion of other experts, Mannheim’s good eye

finally triumphed. The _chef-d’œuvre_ and other spurious pieces for

which the multi-millionaire had paid a fortune disappeared from the

collection.

Long after the above experience with which Mannheim’s name was

connected, Rothschild bought an altar-piece of immense value and great

artistic merit. This fine enamel had been sold to the Baron by a London

dealer, who had evidently bought the piece as an antique and did not

scruple to sell the rarity to his best client for one million lire.

Having been told by his dealer that the enamel had originally come

from Vienna, Baron Rothschild one day pointed it out to an Austrian

attaché, his guest, commenting upon its beauty and his own good fortune

in having it in his possession. He concluded by expressing his surprise

that Austria should let such a fine work of art cross the frontier.

The attaché said nothing in the presence of the other guests, and only

whispered to his host “I will come to-morrow to tell you what I think

of your find!” The next day, in fact, he returned and revealed to the

Baron how he had been deceived in what he thought to be a precious

original, as it was nothing but a copy of a well-known altar-piece

preserved in Vienna. He was even able to name the man who had made the

copy of the precious enamel, a certain Werninger who had secretly made

a reproduction while restoring the original.

The Baron claimed and obtained his million from the London dealer,

whose good faith in this affair was beyond question, and a warrant was

issued against Mr. Werninger. The dealer did not recover the price he

had paid but Mr. Werninger was sentenced to five years’ imprisonment,

ample time in which to meditate upon the reprehensible side of his

alluring art.

As usual we must conclude the illustration of this particular branch

of the trade with a warning, for if Baron Rothschild had to regret the

acquisition of expensive enamels, and he is not the only conspicuous

connoisseur to do so, what is the fate likely to overtake the first

exploits of a neophyte in the field! If not assisted by a first-rate

expert, the freshman had better not meddle with enamels for a long

time, but assuage his passion by going and admiring well-known and

authentic pieces in famous museums.

CHAPTER XXII

METAL FAKES

Metal work--The bronze family: brass, copper, and their various

colours and patinæ--Beaten iron work--Arms and armour--

Artificial rust and chemical oxidation--When the imitators of

arms and armour used steel and when iron--Cast iron pieces--

Chemical tests--Difficulties in the connoisseurship of arms

and the story of three shields--Old and modern imitations--

Silver work--Its colour and oxidization--Why artistic pieces

in precious metal are in danger of being destroyed--Fashion one

of the dangers of silver plate--How far reliance may be placed

in marks--Gold work--The tiara of Saitafernes--Jewels and

their extreme rarity--Imitations and forgeries of all ages--

Advice to the non-initiated in the art of buying jewels.

When speaking in another part of this work about the methods of

conferring an appearance of age to newly cast bronze, we remarked that

the faker’s best accomplice in the ageing process was chemistry. The

colouring and bronzing of metals in fact is usually accomplished by one

of two methods, by the action of chemicals or by the application of

bronze powders rendered impalpable and used as a pigment.

The latter method is mostly used in modern industrial art, but has,

nevertheless, been applied in imitating antiques and in disguising

mended parts, etc. It is often used with success in the case of

imitations of excavated objects which generally have a bluish-green

patina. This may be imitated to deceive the eye of the beginner only,

by the application of green-bronze lacquer of a dull lustre, or of

green varnish. The green of the bronze colour is best prepared by

mixing Frankfort black with chrome yellow.

These are, however, but cheap and not always convincing expedients,

the real way to give tone and colour to bronze and other metals is by

resort to chemistry.

A brown colour on bronze, for instance, may be obtained by preparing a

sand bath large enough to contain the article to be bronzed. When the

object has been cleansed from all grease by dipping in boiling potash

lye, it is treated with white vinegar. After this preliminary operation

the object is wiped thoroughly dry and then rubbed with a linen rag

moistened with hydrochloric acid. When this coating is perfectly dry--a

quarter of an hour is sufficient--the article must be heated in the

sand bath until it has acquired a bluish tint, and a final rubbing with

a linen rag soaked in olive oil will change the blue colour to brown.

Recipes and processes are endless and so rich in hues that almost any

tone may be obtained. To any interested in this branch of imitating old

metals we can but suggest the excellent book, _The Metal Worker’s Handy

Book_, edited by William T. Brannt.

As we have said, there are many methods by which to give the proper

patina to metals, and a good deal of mystery, some fakers and imitators

claiming to be in possession of unrevealed secrets.

When exposed to the air for a long time, copper and bronze acquire a

fine brown or green patina which, as every collector knows, greatly

enhances the merits of an artistic piece in these two metals. A perfect

imitation of the result of a long process of time is not an easy

matter, in fact an almost impossible task.

Formerly the patina of a bronze was in a way the final test of

authenticity, but nowadays there are modern imitations of so deceptive

a character that the best connoisseurs are taken in.

One of the best known methods by which old patina is imitated on

copper and bronze, is to follow as closely as possible the process

by which the genuine patina is produced. Thus the action of rain,

interment, immersion in some permeating substance that will generate

hydrosulphuric acid are called into service by those willing to wait

a comparatively long time for the desired effects. Others accelerate

the above process by increasing the proportion of the natural conducive

elements. The objects are also treated with water containing ammonia,

carbonic acid, etc., exposed to the intense and direct action of vapour

or vaporized acid in order to produce those basic salts that form a

certain patina.

To obtain the malachite kind of patina that generally characterizes

objects found in the ground, the imitator generally brushes the metal

over with a very weak solution of cupric nitrate to which a small

quantity of common salt in solution may be added. When completely dry

it is again brushed over with a liquid consisting of one hundred parts

of weak vinegar, five of sal-ammoniac and one of oxalic acid, and the

application is repeated after the first has dried. In about a week’s

time the metal will have acquired a green-brown colour that may be

polished with encaustic if the patina is to have a shiny appearance.

Such is the leitmotiv, more or less, of the processes for obtaining

the green or brown-green patinæ. Some dip the object in cupric acid

and then place it in a room in which an excess of carbonic acid is

produced, by others preference is given to one or the other element

according to the tone and colour desired.

Brass articles are coated with green patina by a solution containing

150 parts of vinegar to which has been added ten parts of copper

dissolved in twenty of nitric acid. An application of this liquid is

generally made on the object.

The brown patina usually characterizing old medals is obtained in many

ways. One is by heating the medal at the flame of a spirit lamp and

then brushing it with graphite. To colour a number of medals at the

same time, some imitators dissolve thirty parts of verdigris and thirty

parts of sal-ammoniac in ten of water, adding water to the solution

till a precipitate is no longer formed. Then the medals are placed in a

shallow dish without touching one another and the boiling solution is

poured over them. The medals are allowed to remain in the solution till

they have acquired the desired tint, which should be a fine brown.

Green or bluish patinæ may also be given to bronze or copper by

triturated copper carbonate used as a paint with a pale spirit varnish,

shellac or sandarac, and applied with a brush.

Verdigris generally gives a bluish tint and crystallized verdigris a

pale green tint. The two tones can be mingled to obtain some special

hue.

Iron work is perhaps one of the easiest to imitate and give an

appearance of antiquity. As far as the actual work is concerned,

it rests entirely upon the skill and artistic taste of the worker.

Patina on iron is either caused simply by rust or by a slow process

of oxidation which confers a rich, dark tone to iron. There is also a

special patina seen on iron that has been under water for a long time,

but this is rare in imitations and very difficult to obtain.

The rusty coating on iron can be produced by almost any preparation

capable of oxidizing the surface or transforming it into basic salt

provided a red colour results, as with nitric or hydrochloric acid, for

instance.

The brown patina is often obtained by oiling the piece and exposing it

to the direct action of flame. The two methods may be alternated and

the corrosion of the acid here and there adds character to the piece.

Methods are so various, however, that the way to obtain a convincing

patina is perhaps contained in the dictum of an Italian antiquary: “To

inflict upon the object that is to be turned into an antique every

possible indignity and abuse.”

The patina in imitations of old iron work is so well reproduced

nowadays that even experts are unable to distinguish the real from the

unreal with certainty, so much so that more than one has had recourse

to an analysis of the composition of the iron in order to decide

whether the object were modern or antique.

[Illustration: LAMP DESIGNED BY PROFESSOR ORLANDINI, Jun.]

[Illustration: MANTEL-PIECE.

By Prof. Orlandini, an honest imitator of the Renaissance, who is

responsible for many fine pieces of ornamental work and many good

restorations of antique works.]

This justifies the verdict of Moreau, an expert and celebrated artist

in iron, who when called upon to decide whether a certain artistic key

exhibited at the Paris World Exhibition of 1878 were really of ancient

workmanship, replied that he could not tell unless he were allowed

to break the key and examine the grain of iron.

Italy is one of the countries where the imitation of old iron is

traditional. In olden times it was the work of Caparra and other

artists of the Renaissance that were imitated, nowadays old models are

reproduced for the benefit of the tourist, and some are conceived in

the old style with extreme perfection for those collectors who go in

for originals and who buy this modern work as genuine _chefs-d’œuvre_

of the Quattrocento and Cinquecento.

Florence, Venice, and the town of Urbino furnish the Italian market

with the best imitations of old candelabra, andirons, gates, lamps,

and keys; in fact everything that is likely to attract the tourist or

please the collector.

Nearly every country possesses good imitators of artistic old iron,

which is perhaps due to the fact that such imitations do not require

any great artistic ability, nor is the coat of rust on modern iron a

matter incurring expense or complicated methods. The most difficult in

this field are the imitations of arms of all kinds, which require a

skilful workman and often a finished artist in iron work.

In this particular branch of faking it is not only a question of

reproducing old weapons of a national character, but the forger

frequently turns his attention to imitating arms of exotic type. We all

know that Constantinople is the place _par excellence_ for imitations

of old Oriental arms and armour, but very few are aware that when

they buy an Oriental poignard or Turkish gun ornamented with passages

from the Koran in Africa, for instance, they are buying goods made

in Germany. As a matter of fact, however, German factories supply

Oriental maritime markets with all their fine arms. We still recollect

the amazement of an American tourist who on returning from a fair near

Tangiers showed the hotel-keeper his find, a fine Morocco knife with

a carved scabbard in brass, and was told that it was German. As he

persisted in his incredulity, the hotel-keeper showed him the mate of

his bargain, which had been presented to him by the German commercial

traveller who had lodged in his hotel.

As usual, collectors of the genre being diverse as to taste and calibre

as connoisseurs, the accommodating faker has goods to suit the varied

scale of his clients, or rather there are fakers of arms and armour

like the Venetian rubbish which is for easily pleased greenhorns, and

others producing fine goods for the man of exquisite taste such as

the product of Vienna, Belgium, France, and sundry Italian artists of

forged steel. We have purposely made a distinction by saying sundry

Italian artists, because while the imitation of arms in other countries

assumes the character of factory work of extremely good quality, in

Italy the artist who forges steel, chisels it and imitates old weapons,

is usually a solitary worker in his own home, a fact that makes him

far more dangerous to the collector. These artists are often simply

imitators of the old style whose work is sold by others as antique.

One of them used to live in Lucca whose imitations of old daggers

_cinquedee_ or _lingue di bove_ have become famous. Another in a town

of Northern Italy, imitates Negroli and Milanese work with uncommon

success.

Many of these artists, who imitated and copied old damascened work

to perfection, with no thought of cheating, have executed fine work

that can stand upon its own merits so to say. Such, for instance, is

the work of Zuloaga, the father of the painter of that name, and of

another Spaniard of repute in the artistic world, Mariano Fortuny.

This excellent painter was also a first-rate chiseller and good artist

in damascened work. He imitated the Moresque style to perfection. At

the sale that took place after his death, one of his productions, a

damascened sword, fetched the price of 15,000 francs, and was sold with

no other recommendation than that of being a modern imitation of the

antique by Mariano Fortuny.

In a letter written to the well-known amateur Baron Davillier, Fortuny

speaks of a flourishing factory near his studio in which excellent

imitations of armour were made, chiefly repoussé shields. It may be

taken for granted that if such a judge as Fortuny called the imitation

of this Roman work excellent, some of them are at present enriching

well-known collections.

There is a scarcity of genuine pieces on the market, in fact hardly a

single fine Cinquecento sword or halberd is to be seen in shops now or

is for sale. The few still obtainable are poor specimens as a rule, and

this fact ought to put the neophyte on his guard when he is offered

some gorgeously ornamented sword, pike, ranseur or partisan lavishly

chased and gilded.

* * * * *

Some years ago an elegant lady was asked why the fair sex preferred to

dress elaborately rather than in the stylish simplicity of tailor-made

gowns, to which she replied, “Perhaps because it is less expensive.” In

a way the fine plain swords and unornamented pieces of armour are more

difficult to fake; they would seem to demand the same eye for form as

a perfectly cut, well-fitting, simple tailor-made gown. This combined

with the collector’s cheap taste in arms may be the reason why the

faker gives preference to imitations loaded with chased or damascened

ornamentation, and enriched with gilding and elaborate arabesques.

The rarity of imitations of fine weapons characterized by elegant

lines, simplicity and sobriety of ornament, suggested to the author

some years ago the solution to a difficult problem propounded by Baron

Nathaniel Rothschild.

When called to Baron Rothschild’s magnificent mansion in Vienna, I

found this rich and sagacious collector had received two fine swords

that were being offered for sale. One was simplicity itself, the other

over-ornamented and lavishly gilded on blade and hilt.

“Which do you advise me to buy? I must decide between the two.”

To be frank, they both looked genuine to me, but the Baron’s question

roused a suspicion in my mind that one of the two swords was a forgery.

“I should buy this one,” I answered, pointing to the sword almost

deprived of ornament.

“You have a good eye,” complimented the Baron. “The other sword is an

imitation, one of the most admirable I have ever seen.”

My discernment, however, was merely based on the accepted aphorism that

the combination in art of simplicity and extreme elegance is difficult

to imitate, otherwise who knows but what I might not have selected the

faked sword.

It must be added here, that an imitation can very rarely bear close

comparison with a genuine piece. The proximity of the genuine article

is always rather disastrous to the fake, and never more so than in the

case of arms and armour. This may be accounted for by the difference in

the modern methods of working and ornamenting steel. These methods not

only produce a difference in the raw and worked steel that connoisseurs

claim to distinguish, but the ornamentation itself is wrought by other

means. Engraved ornaments, especially on pieces that do not aim to

deceive first-rate connoisseurs, are rarely done by the old method but

preferably by acids.

Damascening, such as is rarely done now even in the East, was a skilful

and complicated operation by which steel blades and armour were inlaid

with gold or silver ornamentations. The designs were first cut deep

into the steel with a burin, then the gold or silver was beaten in

with a hammer, not only until the surface was smooth, but until the

inset was securely worked into and held by all the irregularities of

the groove. Such work is now imitated by gilding over a rather shallow

groove obtained by the action of nitric acid. The sombre shine of old

steel is generally reproduced by a thin coat of _encaustic_. The sum

total of these differences, together with a certain loss of artistic

sense in the art, are the causes perhaps of the disastrous effect upon

fakery of a close proximity with genuineness, as above noted.

This, of course, is in common cases, for, as we have said, there are

sporadic workers in steel who produce pieces that baffle the best

connoisseurs--as an artistic object cannot always be tested by

breaking it and examining the texture of the metal, which would be the

safest method at present.

Here again we are forced to advise the new-comer in the field of

connoisseurship during his search for arms in his first enthusiastic

stage, to use more than one grain of salt with what he hears, and

several pounds of scepticism when he comes across what would seem to be

a real find. For over thirty years arms, we mean fine specimens, have

practically disappeared from the market. Pistols, guns and weapons of

a late epoch may still be seen, but not swords of the Quattrocento and

early Cinquecento.

Also in this field the semi-faked article has the usual luck of

fetching a good price with the majority of collectors. Plain old

pistols are often embellished with all kinds of most seductive

additions. Mottoes are engraved or inlaid in silver on blades

originally simple but deprived of the elegant simplicity to which we

have already alluded.

These, however, are the cheap articles of the trade; but the story

of three shields, a well-known incident still recounted among Paris

collectors, offers ample proof that there are also in this field

imitations that defy the best connoisseurs, as we have already said,

and gladly repeat, in order to render our warning to the novice all the

more emphatic.

One of these skilled imitators flourished several years ago in Italy’s

chief rival in antiquities and faking. We refer, of course, to Spain.

The first of the three identical shields, all of which came to Paris,

was palmed off on Mr. Didier-Petit, an excellent connoisseur, who

paid the good round sum of £400 for this fine piece of imitation. It

was repoussé work with a mythological subject in the centre, “Jove

fulminating the Titans.” The person to be struck down really, however,

was poor Mr. Didier-Petit, rather than the Titans, for on realizing

that he had been fooled he died of grief or apoplexy, brought on

by his disillusion, and wounded pride as a connoisseur. Under the

auctioneer’s hammer at a subsequent sale, the famous shield fetched £20.

The second, of identical make, was very nearly passed off on Baron

Davillier, perhaps the most esteemed connoisseur of his time. Baron

Davillier was offered the rare piece in Spain. He was struck at first

by its beauty and appearance of authenticity as well as the plausible

story by which the owner explained his possession of such a valuable

object. The bargain was struck at £320 and, happy over his piece of

good luck, Baron Davillier, like a true collector, hastened to convey

his find safely to his home in Paris. Noticing at the Custom House

that the official treated his precious find with indifference, he

became suspicious, and his suspicion of having been cheated grew to

certainty before the end of the journey. It would take long to recount

the circumstances by which Baron Davillier recovered his £320, suffice

it to say that he did recover them and the Spaniard replaced the faked

shield in the panoply from whence the Baron had taken it down, swearing

all the time that it was genuine even though the Baron had seen another

like it, that there might be twins among articles of virtu, etc.

But there was still the third of the shield triplet fated to come to

Paris, bought by the well-known expert called, or rather nicknamed,

Couvreur. Curiously enough, this third expert from one and the same

city was also a specialist in arms, as Baron Davillier might have

been considered, had his immense knowledge not conferred upon him the

character of a specialist in almost every branch of connoisseurship.

[Illustration: PLAQUETTES OF VARIOUS ARTISTS.

Imitations of Roman work.]

Where did Couvreur buy this third shield? From the very man who tried

to cheat Baron Davillier. It appears it was not the same shield as

the Baron’s, though of identical workmanship, for there were trifling

differences between it and the fake No. 2 to reach Paris. Couvreur had

paid a fine price for his find, £800. He never recovered his money and

created a scandal by presenting the piece for exhibition at the World’s

Show of 1878, insulting the judges upon their refusal to place it among

the genuine pieces. Thus he lived and died maintaining that all who

believed the piece to be a fake were fools.

This story only goes to prove that in every branch of imitation or

faking there exist some artists of unusual talent able almost to

attain perfection. Those who remember the story of the famous Gladius

Rogieri quoted by Paul Eudel in his amusing book, _Le Truquage_, and

all the discussion held in Court over this supposed sword of the

valiant King Robert of Sicily, are aware how a good connoisseur such

as M. Basilewski and a well-informed dealer like M. Nolivos can be

taken in by a fine piece of faking, and how a legion of experts may

give contrary evidence as to the authenticity of an object. And if

this could happen in Paris, one of the most enlightened cities as to

connoisseurship, and among a coterie of specialists, it may be imagined

what possibilities for deception are offered by America, that El Dorado

of fakers.

While speaking of first-rate imitations by fakers conscientious enough

to use steel, we may add that there are successful imitations in which

iron and cast iron have been substituted for the orthodox metal for

weapons.

The learned Demmin declares that “the casting which forgery has made

it very difficult to recognize” is a source of no little embarrassment

to collectors. He suggests that when there is a suspicion that a piece

is cast, an unimportant part of it should be filed and, as usual, the

texture of the material be examined. If under the magnifying glass the

grain appears coarser and very shiny, the piece has been cast. To tell

iron from steel Demmin suggests that a drop of sulphuric acid diluted

with water should be applied. If the action of this liquid turns the

metal black it is steel, if a greenish mark is made that can be easily

washed away with water, then it is iron. The black stain is produced on

steel because the acid eats into the iron and not the carbon contained

in the composition of steel.

Before closing the topic of arms and armour, we may observe that

marks on these pieces, whether engraved or impressed, are hardly a

guarantee, as marks can be as easily imitated on these articles as

on any other kind of artistic imitation. In the case of weapons they

have even been imitated by workers contemporary with the artist they

fraudently copy, in order to take advantage of the high reputation of

certain marks. The work of a Missaglia, Domenico or Filippo Negroli,

however, is not only attested by the stamped name or _sigla_ but by the

inimitable sum total of their art. Many imitators have made a great

study of copying impressed marks, but have neglected or failed to copy

the individual characteristics that bear witness to an artist as much

as his signature.

In the imitation and faking of ancient art in its various branches,

the methods and the results all differ so little that we fear to grow

monotonous in this brief sketch of the questionable trade when now

entering another class of metal work, that of silver and gold.

The precious metals require no recipe for patinæ, as patinæ play

no part. This is especially so in the case of gold, but as naïve

collectors of all branches of art present the same idiosyncrasies,

it is evident that the general trend of trickery in the human comedy

is more or less identical, when allowance is made for the different

materials peculiar to each particular art. Indeed the whole matter

might be reduced to a simple equation with no unknown quantity, namely

a fool on one side and on the other a fraud which works out to a

positive and disastrous result for the former.

In the case of silver, although there is not exactly a question of

patina properly so-called, there is certainly a question of colouring

or oxidizing, for old silver, as everyone knows, never keeps the

brightly shining appearance of a new piece. It rather improves with

time by the acquisition of a low, pleasing tonality which has a most

favourable effect, a sort of pleasing light and shade, which the flat

negative shininess of a new piece rarely possesses.

In England the conservatism of the upper classes has preserved some

really genuine silver articles with duly authenticated pedigree. In

France the spirit of the Revolution may be responsible to a certain

extent for the scarcity of rich pieces of artistic silver, only long

before the _ruit hora_ of the Revolution various circumstances had

rendered the life of artistic silver precarious, risks to which all

artistic objects in precious metals are liable. Many fine pieces of

silver, in fact, were coined into money during Louis XIV’s time, when

the State became a financial wreck under the glorious reign of the

_Roi Soleil_. Changing fashion and taste also, combined with the fact

that the silver was for use and not collections, contributed to the

destruction of old types of silver-plate to make way for new ones more

in keeping with the new forms dictated by fashion or altered taste.

To the combined effect of financial distress and changing taste Italy

also owes the destruction of old silver that would otherwise have come

down to us intact, just as nowadays plated silver is likely to pass

undisturbed from one generation to another.

It is not uncommon in Italy, to hear that some aristocratic family had

ancient silver melted down a few years ago, to make new and commonplace

table spoons and forks. A lady from Siena who did this for a whim, kept

one piece of the old silver service and was much astonished to learn

later that this one piece alone would have fetched a sum sufficient to

buy the coveted new set of table silver. In Italy, and more especially

in Tuscany, the heavy taxes levied by Napoleon during the occupation

forced many Florentine families to get rid of their silver-plate. As

a matter of fact in Italy and elsewhere fine pieces are very rare

nowadays. Yet a few years ago fickle fashion helped several people of

good taste to form excellent collections, gatherings of artistic pieces

that the art lover would seek in vain to-day. That was the happy time,

when old-fashioned and yet artistic silver was hardly reckoned above

the intrinsic value of the metal it contained. Fifty or so years ago

it was not uncommon for one of the few collectors of artistic silver

to come across some artistic beauty offered at so much a gramme,

generally a very moderate figure slightly above the current price of

the metal or at times at the actual value of the silver. To quote one

instance out of many. In 1855, at the sale held after the death of

Mlle. Mazencourt, some particularly fine flambeaux and other pieces of

silver were sold at the price of 20 centimes a gramme. Such conditions

explain how Baron Pichon, a collector of taste, was able to buy for the

moderate sum of 300 francs an artistic bowl which was sold at his death

for 14,000 francs, a price that could easily be surpassed nowadays.

Unfortunately for the true collector, not only has old silver become

fashionable, but it has become fashionable to be a collector of

artistic silver, and thus real connoisseurship and ignorant greedy

wealth have started the usual competition that inevitably creates an

artificial standard of values, all too apt to generate faking. Faked

silver, in fact, came at once triumphantly to the front in forms of all

kinds, entirely new pieces successfully parading as old, were launched

upon the market as well as plain old pieces decked out with the heavy

ornamentation likely to suit the taste of the parvenu. There was also

the usual piecemeal of different authentic parts, joined together more

or less harmoniously by modern work, in fact all that the faker’s

genius and versatility is able to produce.

Silver marks, which on genuine pieces guarantee the quality of the

metal and the authenticity of the piece as the work of a certain

artist, factory or mint, can, unfortunately, be imitated with success.

In fact the faker who is a good psychologist and knows that the

neophyte amateur relies largely upon his knowledge of marks, generally

expends great care upon the imitation of the various hall-marks.

Though, as we have already said, silver has no patina properly

so-called, there is the tone and colour which has to be imitated. To

dull silver--to give it, we mean, the leaden-brownish colour acquired

by age--a mixture with sulphur or chlorine is used. A solution of

pentasulphide of potassium--the liver of sulphur of the shops--is

generally used. Liver of sulphur is prepared by thoroughly mixing and

heating together two parts of well-dried potash and one of sulphur

powder. This mixture also takes effect on cupriferous silver, but the

result is not so fine. A velvety black is obtained by dipping the

article into a solution of mercurous nitrate previous to oxidization.

This method is used when a half polish is to be given to the silver,

leaving the dark tones in the grooves. Another method consists of

dipping the article into chlorine water, a solution of chloride of

lime, or into _eau de Javelle_. Special works on metals also give many

other methods and it is for the imitator to chose the best adapted

for the particular case and to use his artistic criterion to obtain a

convincing effect.

Passing on to gold, more especially in jewellery, we may say that

imitators and fakers have wrought havoc by filling the market with

spurious products. Imitation in this branch ranges from copying the

old art of working gold, of which the famous tiara of Saitaphernes,

bought by the Louvre, is one of the most striking examples, to the

small piece of jewellery with imitated enamels or more or less genuine

stones. In this line there is something to suit all tastes, from the

eager connoisseur, difficult to please, still on the look out for

the marvellous jewellery of the Rennaissance and early sixteenth

century, to the less exclusive, satisfied with later epochs down to the

eighteenth century.

There is no way of helping the neophyte to collect jewellery, not only

because fine old pieces are extremely rare, but because no advice or

theoretical hints can help the discernment of the genuine article, only

sound and well-tested experience, gained often at great cost, is of any

real avail.

In this branch also there are imitations that are entirely new and

others, like the above-said tiara, that have become such by the

preponderance of restored parts, or because the latter are the most

important artistically speaking. In the tiara of Saitaphernes the

genuine part, if genuine, is the upper portion of the domed tiara,

which is said to have been an ancient drinking cup reversed and placed

at the top of the tiara.

Many well-imitated rings are really old worn-out rings used for the

circle, to show that they have been used, on which the artistic setting

of the jewel or other ornamental part has been soldered.

In conclusion, when you would buy old jewellery buy as if it were

modern and pay the price of imitations, then if by some rare chance you

are mistaken you will experience the unique pleasure of possessing a

“find,” but never reverse the process, for if you buy an ancient piece

of jewellery you will certainly realize in due time that it is really

modern.

CHAPTER XXIII

MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS

Carved wood--Artistic furniture--Wood staining and patina--

The merits of elbow-grease--Painted and lacquered furniture

--Veneer and inlaid work--Musical instruments--Imitations

and fakers of musical instruments--Connoisseurship of musical

instruments twofold--Attribution and labels--Some good

imitators--The violin as example--The restoration and odd

adventures of well-known musical instruments--Legends and

anecdotes that help--Analysis of form and of sound--Rossini’s

saying.

The finest pieces of faked furniture are very rarely entirely new,

sometimes they are old pieces to which rich ornaments have been added;

at other times, and this is the most common occurrence, they are put

together from fragments belonging to two, three, or even four different

pieces, the parts and debris, in fact, of old broken furniture. There

is also the entirely new fake imitating old furniture, but this is

rarely as convincing as the other which is the really dangerous type

even for an experienced collector.

Impressed by the great amount of faked furniture glutting the Paris

market, Paul Eudel says, “in principle there is no more such a thing as

antique furniture. All that is sold is false or terribly repaired.”

In Italy, that inexhaustible mine of past art, it is still possible to

find genuine pieces, provided, of course, that the collector does not

insist upon having those first-rate pieces now belonging to museums or

collections formed several years ago. There are, however, in Italy, as

in every other country, modern productions of antique furniture for the

novices in the collector’s career. This furniture may be carved out

of old pieces of wood or ordinary wood. In both cases it is generally

necessary to give an old colouring to the wood, for which there are a

variety of methods according to the desired effect, tone, colour, etc.

Many use walnut-juice, others permanganate of potash, and still others

the more drastic system of burning the surface of the wood with acid.

The old way of imitating worm-holes was to use buckshot, a ridiculous

method which nevertheless had its vogue and apparently satisfied the

gross eye of some collectors. Nowadays worm-holes are made with an

instrument that imitates them to perfection, although they do not go so

deep as the genuine ones, and this difference, by the way, is one of

the tests to tell real worm-holes from spurious ones. As new furniture

that imitates old is generally too sharp-edged and neatly finished,

it is usually subjected to a regular course of ill-treatment. French

dealers call this process “_aviler un meuble_,” and it consists of

pounding with heavy sticks, rubbing with sand-paper, pumice, etc.

The finishing touch, that peculiar polished surface characterizing

ancient furniture, is usually given by friction with wool after a

slight coating of benzine in which a little wax has been dissolved.

The less wax used and the more elbow-grease, the more will the polish

resemble that of real old furniture and the more difficult does it

become to detect the deceit. If much wax has been used the scratch of

a needle is sufficient to reveal even the thinnest layer, but if it is

so imperceptible as to stand this test it is very difficult to tell

the real from the imitation. The polished parts of an old piece of

furniture are not casual but the result of long use. Prominent parts

are naturally, therefore, the ones to get so polished rather than other

parts.

I remember witnessing a curious sight one day when admitted to the

sanctum of a well-known antiquary. Half a dozen stools had been

repaired, most generously repaired, a new patina had been given and

now they were to receive the last touches, the polished parts that add

such charm to old furniture. The workman who had half finished the job

kept passing and repassing close to the stools which he had arranged in

a row, rubbing his legs against each one. I asked him the meaning of

the performance and he answered that as there were no sharp edges on

the lower part of those sixteenth-century walnut stools, he wanted to

find out where and to what extent they would be most polished by use.

Not having a genuine stool from which to copy, he had resorted to this

means so as to make no mistake. I very nearly asked him if he thought

everyone was the same height and had the same length of leg. But as

the work proceeded I gathered from the practical application of his

method, better than I could have done from any explanation, that he was

endeavouring to get a mere hint, where to begin to rub with his pad, in

order to produce that vague patch of hollows one notices sometimes in

church benches.

The same patience is necessary in making imitation worm-holes, which

are so cunningly distributed, so convincingly worked in their erratic

manner of piercing wood as to suggest to Edmond Bonnaffé the fine bit

of sarcasm: “_Des vers savants chargés de fouiller le bois neuf à la

demande_.”

That piecemeal kind of furniture, the parts of which are unquestionably

antique but of various origins, being the remains of more than one

piece of furniture--_l’assemblage_, as the French call it--may

prove a danger to the best connoisseurs if done well and with taste. In

certain respects the piece is genuinely antique, but not exactly as the

collector understands the word, hence its fraudulency entitles it to be

classified among fakes. It is incredible what an industrious antiquary

is able to do in the way of piecing furniture together. This consists

not merely of finding a top for table-legs, or legs for a table-top,

but there is no limit to the invention of this piecemeal furniture.

A wooden door may furnish the back of a throne when well matched

with a rich old coffer; the gilded ornamentation of an altar may be

transformed into the head of a Louis XV bed, and so on. In the same way

a simple piece of furniture may be enriched by attaching ornaments,

coats of arms, etc. The whole is invariably toned and harmonized by

means of one of the above-mentioned methods.

Naturally, ignorance of style sometimes leads some fakers to extremely

amusing blunders, but it must be confessed the cases are rare, and

this piecemeal furniture has been palmed off on too many connoisseurs,

and graces too many well-reputed collections to be dismissed with a

smile of incredulity. Were antiquaries more disposed to talk or less

indulgent towards the conceit of collectors, it might be learnt that

all the rich furniture sold during the last twenty years to museums and

collectors belongs to this composite order.

A special branch of the imitation of antique furniture is inlaid work,

the French _marqueterie_ and Italian _tarsia_, by which designs are

traced upon the surface by inlaying wood, ivory or metal. There are

various epochs and styles of inlaid furniture. One may begin with the

geometrical patterns of the Trecento or the _cappuccino_ of about the

same time and later, and gradually pass through the many styles and

methods to the complex ornamentation of Buhl’s work.

The early work, including the _cappuccino_, a peculiar inlaid ivory

work with geometric patterns, is very well imitated in Italy where

restorers of this kind of furniture generally turn into good imitators,

and become at times impenitent fakers of the most fantastic would-be

old style. Skill in inlaying wood and ivory according to different

epochs and the ordinary collector’s love of ornamented furniture have

suggested to some imitators the most absurd combinations of styles, a

riot of incongruity and incompatibility. It is not rare to see fine

chairs that would otherwise be tasteful but for the heavy ornamentation

of inlaid wood or ivory arabesques, grotesques, etc. The outrage of

having a fifteenth-century, inlaid after the style and designs of at

least a century later, is not uncommonly excused by the explanation

that it appeals to the tawdry taste of customers and that the article

commands a higher price by the addition of the heavy incongruous

ornamentation.

This peculiar form of degeneration in taste, the passion for excessive

ornamentation, is also what often mars the imitations of seventeenth-

and eighteenth-century painted furniture, imitations of the Venetian

style especially being generally very carelessly finished but

overcharged with gilding and cheap bits of painted ornamentation.

French imitations in this line are not so debased as some Italian, but

like them they are not very convincing, as it is almost impossible to

imitate the French eighteenth-century gilding, and the carving of this

epoch shows such neatness and is so clean cut that the gilded parts

assume an appearance of metal, a quality that the modern industry of

antiques does not find convenient or is unable to imitate. The French

Buhl also is often imitated with celluloid instead of tortoise-shell

and can only succeed in attracting the very easily satisfied collector.

This is the case with some other cheap imitations overcharged with

ordinary gilded bronze. By the side of these specimens, however, French

art also counts some excellent imitations done by real artists, which

if not successful in deceiving experienced collectors are nevertheless

regular _chefs-d’œuvre_ in the art of imitating the finest and richest

pieces of the Louis XV and Louis XVI styles.

The simplicity and purity of line that characterized English styles

from the end of the seventeenth century to the best period of the next,

helped to keep the imitators of this country within bounds. Their fancy

in any case was less inventive and less disastrously enterprising than

that of the cheap imitators of Italian furniture.

Before leaving the subject, we may say that many of the walnut panels

in furniture, which appear to be so elaborately carved, are not carved

at all but burnt into the desired patterns. The process consists of

making a good cast iron matrix from a fine bas-relief, then heating

it and pressing it upon the wood by a special procedure by which all

the superfluous wood is burnt away and the rest takes the shape of the

mould. This method not only gives the wood the desired form in perfect

imitation of carving, but the burning stains it to a fine brown tone

very much resembling old wood, after which an application of oil or

encaustic is sufficient to give it a semblance of patina.

In another part of this book we have noted that in Bologna more

especially imitations of old tables are placed for a time in cheap

restaurants where, through grease, dirt and rough wear and tear, they

acquire that fine patina so highly esteemed in ancient wood. Such

pieces are not only found in towns but are housed here and there about

the country, sometimes in old palaces and villas, or else in out of the

way nooks. The former system gives the alluring sensation of buying

something really worth while, and at first hand, from its historical

owner; the latter that a real find has been discovered, that find which

is the eternal _fata Morgana_ of freshman collectors.

Imitations of musical instruments vary according to the style of the

instrument and its musical quality. In some fakes the musical quality

is of minor importance to a certain extent, the artistic properties

and ornamentation being the chief consideration with the collector. In

other instruments the quality of the tone is of importance, so that

though the form may not be neglected, the faker must bear in mind that

his imitation will have to stand a double test: it must satisfy the ear

and stand the examination of an experienced eye.

The first class includes collectively such instruments as are no longer

in use and are highly ornamented with carving, inlaid work or gilding

such as lutes, archilutes, harps, virginals, spinets, etc.; the second

comprises instruments still in use such as violins, ’cellos, etc. The

ornamental, strange and obsolete instruments are the ones that fakers

chiefly furnish to the ordinary trade.

Naturally the trade in imitating instruments for the mere curio hunter

and non-musical collector, is not so remunerative as other branches of

the shady art of faking. The number of collectors in this branch is

comparatively restricted, many of them talented and not easily duped as

is the case in all branches not enjoying popularity. The tourist would

rather go home with a painting or faked bronze of Naples or elsewhere,

than carry an instrument he cannot play, which will probably be an

encumbrance and dust-catcher in the small rooms of big cities. On the

other hand, however, there is nothing complicated about this branch of

faking. It is usually an easy matter for a guitar or mandoline maker

to invest in the small amount of material needed, and to turn his hand

to the work. It must also be taken into account that these workers

are very often repairers of ancient instruments whereby they learn to

make their imitations technically correct, though this is by no means

always the case. We have, indeed, seen appalling exceptions, pianos

of an early period transformed into spinets, lutes with grotesque and

impossible finger-boards, etc. Some careless and certainly unmusical

imitators go so far as to make instruments that could never be played,

and even put common wire instead of gut strings, which makes one wonder

what kind of collector it can be who delights in such delusions.

Our intention is to deal only with the artistic side of musical

instruments, so we lay no claim to real connoisseurship of musical

instruments, more especially as regards the family of stringed

instruments which finds its best and most complete expression in the

violin. Yet the fact that the great discoveries have generally been

made by ignorant men like Tarisio, not necessarily fine musicians,

goes to show that connoisseurship of form has its importance, greatly

resembling after all, the connoisseurship of other branches in its

summing up of various analyses into a final synthesis of form and

character. True, in a good violin there is rarely any ornamentation, or

if there is, it still more rarely furnishes a clue; but although all

is entrusted to simplicity of line and form in its most aristocratic

and elemental expression, there still seems to be enough to tell of the

“touch of a vanished hand.”

“How interesting,” justly remarks Olga Racster, “it is to observe an

expert spelling out the name of an old fiddle by the aid of this ‘touch

of a vanished hand.’ How eagerly he seeks it and finds it with the help

of that alphabet which lies concealed in the colour, shape, height and

curves of an old violin.”

Together with the difficulty of faking instruments the synthesis of

connoisseurship in this line could not be better expressed. As for

the quality of the tone, the expert relies purely and simply upon

his ear, no book or hints of a practical character can assist the

expert to perfect his ear. All depends upon natural disposition and

the experience of a well-trained organ in this most important part of

connoisseurship of musical instruments.

When Rossini was asked what is required to make a good singer, he

said: “Three things, voice, voice, voice.” The quotation fits here for

the chief requirement of a good connoisseur of musical instruments as

regards their musical quality consists of a triply good ear.

CHAPTER XXIV

VELVETS, TAPESTRIES AND BOOKS

Olla Podrida: Genuine and faked antique stuffs--The peculiar

knowledge necessary to an expert on stuffs--The difficulty

in imitating Renaissance velvet--Collectors of costumes--

Collections of dolls--Tapestries--Repairs and faked parts

or qualities--Book collecting--Two kinds of book collectors

--The faking of editions and rare bindings--The extended and

ambitious activity of the art of faking--Faked aerolites!

Assembling in this chapter a variety of objects under the title of

minor branches of art collecting, we do not use the term artistically,

but merely because these branches apparently attract fewer art lovers

than the others, and the activity of the faker is more restricted in

their case. In many of these branches, too, the art of collecting

and connoisseurship is reduced to technical knowledge and artistic

sentiment plays a very secondary part.

If there is any one branch of collecting in which it is necessary

to be a specialist to ensure success, that branch is unquestionably

antique stuffs. Artistic sentiment and good taste are of comparatively

slight assistance compared with technical knowledge, and they may even

at times produce two dangerous psychological elements only too often

responsible for collectors’ blunders: enthusiasm and suggestion. The

technician with knowledge of the different qualities of materials,

with an eye for the various peculiarities of the weave and colour,

and sound information as to the character of the various patterns,

etc., is doubtlessly the best equipped as a connoisseur of stuffs.

This may sound absurd to the outsider, especially to artists, whom

we have ourselves found to be over-confident as to their qualities,

their pictorial eye, their full acquaintance with form. Yet too many

of these artists, not being collectors or experts, have bought modern

goods as antique, old furniture re-covered with modern brocade that no

expert would for a moment have taken as being of the same date as the

furniture. We refer, of course, to those modern imitations generally

the easiest to detect, however artfully they have been coloured and

aged to give them the appearance of genuine antiquity.

The detection of modern products offers no difficulty to the expert.

They may look extremely convincing to the uninitiated or beginner, as

they possess what may be termed a general impression of antiquity,

but to the trained eye of the expert there are too many essential

differences; and they lack, above all, a character that in the case of

a large quantity of stuff and not a mere sample, is inimitable. For

the Jaquard machine is not the old weaving loom, the material used

is produced with greater care and precision which gives the fabric a

different look even when the coarseness of ancient textiles has been

imitated, the colours are different and so is the chemical process for

dyeing the thread, etc. The sum total of these elementary differences

with which the art of imitation cannot cope, is what reveals to the

expert almost at sight the antiquity or modernity of the product. In

conclusion, with the exception of some rare samples of small pieces,

the modern imitation of ancient stuffs is but a successful optical

illusion.

Imitations that count at least a century of age, on the contrary, prove

dangerous puzzles to experts and connoisseurs of this speciality,

these imitations having been made in almost exactly the same way as

the originals, before weaving machines were invented, and when the

thread was spun and dyed in the simple old way before aniline dyes had

furnished beautiful but most unstable colours.

[Illustration:

_Photo_] [_Alinari_

EUROPA ON THE BULL.

By Andrea Brioschi called “Il Riccio.” Imitation of the Antique, Padua

School.]

In France, under Louis XIII, Renaissance patterns were admirably

copied, as well as those of the sixteenth century. The reproduction of

old designs is not confined to Italy and France alone. In nearly every

country there have been imitators of the best samples of ancient

stuffs, damasks, brocades and velvets.

As regards imitation, the more complex the pattern in design and

colouring, the easier it can be reproduced with success. In fact plain

velvet is the most difficult to imitate. No one, not even in the past,

has ever reproduced the fine velvets of the Quattrocento and early

Cinquecento with complete success.

Methods of ageing modern stuffs which have not the advantage of the

genuine hues of age of old imitations, greatly resemble in general

lines those adopted to give an appearance of age to other objects.

If the colouring is crude and too new looking, the stuff is exposed

to atmospheric action, rain, dew and sunshine. Needless to add, this

treatment must be followed with care and discrimination otherwise the

fabric may be reduced to a rag as well as to an appearance of age.

To harmonize the colours and give them a more faded look, some put

the goods into a bath of slightly tinted liquid, thus obtaining on

the fabric what in painting is termed velatura. Others put the liquid

into an atomizer and steam it on to the stuff. This process has the

advantage of giving alternate hues without any sharp delimitation

between them.

These methods, however, by which the artist can display variation, are

not convenient or possible in the case of large quantities of fabric,

nor is the result convincing in the proximity of the original. One does

not need to be an expert, in fact, to see the difference between the

old and the new on a piece of furniture or in a room where imitations

have been used to supply what was lacking.

To make imitations more convincing, more especially in the case of

small pieces, some antiquaries stitch on bands before discolouring

the stuff, which are afterwards taken off leaving parts with fresher

colours, as often happens in really antique pieces that have belonged

to ecclesiastical copes, etc.

Strict order having been dispensed with in this chapter, and as, after

all, fabrics are involved, we may here touch upon the subject of dress

and past costumes. The rarity of such collections depends not only

upon the fact that the roomy space of a museum is indispensable for

their display but largely upon the scarcity of past century costumes.

This branch of collecting is very useful to the history of fashion and

national costumes, but it must be considered that to be of interest to

the collector a dress must be at least forty years old, and very few

garments attain that age nowadays. Either they are altered to conform

to fashion, or unpicked or given away until they have run through the

scale of society and end in rags. The rarity of the genuine article

appears to correspond with the rarity of collectors of this line,

and there is therefore no question of fakes, unless one should take

seriously certain comic incidents and consider as a collector the

simpleton who buys the cast-off costumes of an elegant fancy dress ball

as genuine articles, those poor imitations, with no pretence at being

anything else, of Henry IV, Marie Antoinette, and other historical

garments.

Having mentioned the subject of costumes, we may speak of another

kind of collection that is also very useful to the history of past

usages and fashions, that of dolls and toys of past centuries. Dolls

and children’s toys are not an invention of to-day. It is safe to say

that their existence can be traced almost as far as the history of

civilization. The Romans used to bury dolls and toys with the bodies of

their little ones or place them in the funereal urn, a usage that has

preserved for us specimens of these tiny objects that have drawn smiles

from young lips closed and sealed centuries ago. Together with these

relics are other images that illustrate the history of costumes like

the dolls, the statuettes offered to temples and churches as ex-votos

and those used in the construction of the old _presepio_ (birth of

Christ scene), the Christmas Eve representations of the Bethlehem

scene. These wooden dolls and statuettes are not only artistic in

themselves, but are dressed in stuffs of their epoch very often cut in

the fashion of the time.

Some of these collections have really been excellent commentaries on

the history of fashion and domestic customs of past ages. Among the few

important collections we may quote as an example that of Mme. Agar,

exhibited by this celebrated French artist several years ago in the

Palais de l’Industrie now demolished. Mme. Agar’s collection was very

complete and illustrative of fashion and life in Holland centuries ago.

The collection had originally belonged to the infant princess, the

daughter of William of Orange and Nassau. Not only was it extremely

artistic, containing several interiors of Dutch houses with inmates

and accurate details suggesting a painting by Terburg or Teniers, but

it represented all kinds of expression of seventeenth-century Dutch

life. Mme. Agar came into possession of this fine collection under the

following circumstances. Returning from one of her artistic tours in

Belgium she visited the city of Ghent and found the collection in the

hands of a gentleman to whom she had been introduced upon her arrival.

She offered to buy it, but the owner refused all offers declaring that

he did not wish to part with the precious collection. However, after

having heard Mme. Agar at the theatre one evening, he was so taken by

her art that he wrote to the actress the very same night, “Come to

fetch my toys. I offer them to you, they are yours.”

There is no question of fakes in this branch either. The difficulty

in finding old stuffs and linen with which to garb the figures is

sufficient to discourage the trade, especially when one remembers how

few customers the imitator could hope to attract.

The art of tapestry weaving is the most complete of the class. Although

technique may play its part in constituting expert knowledge, it is

certainly subordinate to the artistic qualities necessary to perfect

connoisseurship.

Faking plays no part in this field, at least not the conspicuous

part that it plays in painting and other artistic products likely to

attract rich amateurs. This is easily understood when one takes into

consideration the time, patience and money needful to the making of

tapestry; it costs something like eighty pounds a square yard. The

imitator also knows that it would be a waste of time and money to

fake old tapestries as any expert can tell modern work from old. The

apparatus has hardly undergone any essential change it is true, but

the materials are so different from formerly that fairly tolerable

imitations can only be given in the case of repairs to old pieces. On

account of the great cost of modern tapestry the few existing factories

either belong to the State or potentates, or they are supported by

the lavish encouragement of some modern Mæcenas. As we have said, the

difference between the work of modern and ancient tapestry does not lie

in a difference of process, unchanged in essentials since the Egyptian

dynasties, but rather in the impossibility of obtaining materials like

the old ones.

Although some unscrupulous dealers do palm off over-repaired pieces of

tapestry on foolish novices, the repair of tapestry is no faking after

all, for the decorative character of the fabric fully justifies the

mending and restoration of missing parts and, unlike painting, the work

does not bear an individual imprint. It is our duty, however, to warn

the neophyte that repairs are very seldom pointed out by dealers and

that it is absolutely necessary for the collector to train his eye in

order to be able to detect the modern parts from the old and to know

how much must be bought as antique and how much as modern. This is not

so difficult as it may appear. The modern parts are worked in with the

needle and although the threads have generally been specially dyed,

as the usual colours now on sale are very rarely suitable, there is a

slight difference in the final effect. Nothing to offend the eye, even

when closely examined, but enough to warn the expert of the size of

the repaired piece. Sometimes the repairer of tapestries uses a method

which in our opinion comes under the head of faking. This consists of

re-colouring faded parts with water-colours or tempera. Some of this

touching up is really cleverly done, at other times it is so clumsy

that one wonders how even a novice can be taken in. If there is any

suspicion that the tapestry has been coloured, a practical test is the

displacement of the threads with a needle as the fresh colours are

generally laid on with a brush and never penetrate between the threads

where the old faded colour is visible. Incredible as it may seem, some

tapestries are touched up with pastel. This was sometimes done even in

the eighteenth century to disguise defects and crudeness of tone and

now it is practised to deceive the eye by making a better match between

the old and the new parts. Of course pastel work is easily detected

if one is allowed to rub the part, but this is not always feasible,

especially at public sales where the tapestry is hung on the wall,

sometimes very high up, on purpose to defy close inspection. There

is also a method of fixing the pastel retouch with an atomizer and a

certain liquid sold in Paris, but even these means are not so effective

as milk and tempera, and hard rubbing with a white cloth will always

reveal the deception when pastel has been used.

Rugs, particularly Oriental rugs, belong in a way to the same family

as tapestry and may be classified with it. There is this difference,

however: being less complicated in character and for the most part

adorned only with geometrical patterns and rudimentary arabesques,

rugs are imitated with greater facility. Things do not change so

quickly in the East as in Western countries, and there the old weaving

apparatus is still in use and materials are only just beginning to be

imported from Europe. A large field is thus opened up to imitation,

and to a certain extent to faking also. It is nevertheless hard

to deceive experts and specialists. Keen-eyed and accustomed to

distinguish between different kinds, and to judge of age, they are

also able to detect modern frauds. But, alas, good experts are rare

and conceited collectors abound, and for this reason fraud is rampant

and remunerative, even in this field. Those buying rugs for the

sake of having a collection and not to furnish their houses with a

comfortable and highly artistic luxury are advised to place themselves

in the hands of an expert. It will save time and trouble. An eclectic

collector, however gifted, will rarely consent to go deeply into this

branch, as the mastery of it implies great sacrifice of time and the

boredom of learning a difficult language, things that prove no obstacle

to the passionate lover of the speciality, but tedious and irksome to

the general art lover.

Following an erratic course in this chapter, we will now pass on to

books, manuscripts and autographs, a branch with many devotees and

all kinds of collectors, in which trickery and faking find an almost

incredibly large sphere of action.

Book collectors are of two kinds, the one who prizes the work for the

rarity of the edition, and the other who is attracted by the binding.

The former is the true book collector, the latter is really only a

collector of rare and artistic bindings. The two preferences do not

mutually exclude one another, of course, and when found together offer

the most complete kind of book collector.

It might be imagined that imitations in this branch would be confined

to such pieces as only require the faker’s shrewdness and imitative

skill and not the great amount of work and money demanded by the

reproduction of a whole edition, but this is not the case. As soon as

fashion--sovereign and despotic in this department also, taste and

art being secondary--sets a value on what is called a rare edition,

false ones find that the work pays and imitations are thrown upon the

market at once. About the end of the eighteenth century a speciality

was made in Lyons of reproducing all the rare editions of Racine’s

works, while Rouen acquired a certain notoriety in faking old volumes

of Molière with every detail carefully and accurately copied--quality

of the paper, the type, decorative initials, tailpieces, etc. That the

labour was worth the trouble and expense is amply proved by the high

prices that some original editions have fetched. The first edition of

Molière’s works, dated 1669, was sold in Paris for 15,000 francs. At M.

Guy Pellion’s sale separate works bearing various dates were sold--_Le

Tartufe_, 1669, for 2200 francs, _Le Misanthrope_ for 1220 francs,

and few volumes below this price. Fashion having set extravagant

prices--the original edition of Molière’s works was sold at 70 to 100

francs apiece at Bertin’s sale, 1885--old incomplete editions have been

completed, and for the late-comers not in time for this half-genuine

article, full and first-class imitations are provided.

Missing pages of rare volumes, incunabula or precious, highly prized

editions, are often supplied by the most skilful pen and ink work.

It is surprising to see how well the clever calligraphic artist can

imitate the printed characters, and how carefully and faithfully the

missing pages are copied from some complete edition. In a damaged

edition it is generally the frontispiece that is missing or the

ornamental title on the first page. Some of the latter are true works

of art and require most artistic penmanship for their reproduction.

The illusion is, nevertheless, often complete. Paul Eudel tells an

amusing story of an expert who had not noticed that one of the pages

of a certain work was a clever piece of penmanship added later, but to

whom the secret was revealed by circumstantial evidence which saved him

from being cheated. The work was so admirably done that the expert had

not detected it to be pen work, till he happened to notice a worm-hole

in the parchment of that page whereas the preceding and following pages

bore no hole. As it was impossible for a worm to reach a page in the

middle of the book without boring through the others, he surmised that

the hole must have been there when the page was done, that the page was

a later addition in fact. Once suspicious, it is easy to ascertain the

truth. A closer examination showed M. Pourquet, such was the name of

the expert, that the page in question was hand work, and not print.

It is true that nowadays, by means of photo-mechanical reproductions

old books, characters and illustrations can be imitated to perfection,

and there are also mills that can supply all sorts of old-fashioned

paper to order, as near as possible to a given sample. Experts claim,

however, that such fakes are only dangerous for the inexperienced

collector, that a magnifying glass reveals the action of the acid in

a sort of scalloped edge to the ink lines, and that, although well

imitated, the paper has a different grain when closely examined, etc.

But it is, of course, understood that fakes are not as a rule intended

to baffle the skill of the expert but rather to take advantage of the

inexperienced.

The expert who gives his attention chiefly to the bindings of the books

needs to be more of an artist than the other. We know that editions,

too, have their elegancy, forms and tasteful simplicity needing, as it

were, an artistically trained eye to enjoy their beauty and appreciate

their value, but compared with bookbinding their artistic quality

seems to be of a more restricted kind. In bookbinding, art in all its

decorative eloquence appears to claim full rights. There are bindings

of past centuries--more especially in Paris, where bookbinding has

always been a grand art--that are really _chefs-d’œuvre_. As usual

it is the unwary who in this branch also pays the highest tribute to

fakery.

From the Grolier bindings down to the last specimens of the eighteenth

century, imitation has a wide field of action for its versatility, but

according to experts the most exploited period is that running from the

early years of the seventeenth century to the end of the eighteenth,

one of the most difficult to imitate and yet one of the most

profitable. There are, of course, various ways of faking old bindings.

Many have tried to fake the whole, beginning with the fabrication of

the ornaments cut in iron which are used to stamp the gilt ornaments

on leather or parchment. In the opinion of the connoisseurs of Paris,

where these imitations appear to find their best market, they are

far from convincing, being only intended for such as seek a certain

decorative quality without pretending to be experts or collectors.

Specialists say there are imitations of a far more dangerous character,

those composed of various genuinely antique parts, those relying upon

some authentic element in the process of making, and original bindings

fitted to other books which thus embellished and enriched fetch higher

prices. The first of the above operations knows no limits but those

set by the material, it may be a question of using old leather or

aged parchment, or of using old labels, or of taking advantage of the

characteristic coloured lining papers that modern industry reproduces

fairly well. Here we have, in fact, the usual composite style with

which a fanciful binding is made or a book put together out of various

elements that are perfectly genuine, but belong to different sources.