FAKED PEWTER
I had not been many years a collector before I found spurious Communion cups and Communion sets were on the market and I obtained some very enlightening information, much of which I cannot publish. It was the practice to blacken the new pieces with acid to give them an appearance of age, and I heard of an instance relating to hundredweights of faked pewter, but I am coming straight to the point and the photographs on Plates [XXV] and [XXVI] will corroborate my statement. I was further informed that they were making deep dishes out of old bedpans, preserving the maker’s mark on the bottom. I had had a bedpan hidden away in the stable loft for some time, and I decided to prove how far this information was correct. The pan had come from Ireland with a box full of “gatherings,” and I had almost decided to sell it to be melted.
I eventually wrote to a firm of pewter manufacturers explaining the conversion I wished to have effected, and they informed me they would do the job if I would say whether I wanted a deep dish or a shallow one and what width of rim I desired. In about three weeks after I had sent them the bedpan I received the fine deep (alms) dish bearing the maker’s name and mark—Joseph Austen—well preserved, proving the article was made in Cork over 100 years ago. It looks very well indeed and I have never had its virtue questioned; in fact when I have told visitors they have been greatly astonished, while a few have been hard to convince.
Now you understand my remark that I had one “alms dish” that had never been inside a sacred edifice.
When the Pewterer’s done his pewtering,
And his work is quite au fait:
When his making’s turned to faking,
And the marks are left O.K.;
The collector sees, and then agrees,
The pewter must be old.
Now doubts arise, before his eyes,
He fears that he’s been sold.