XII
HINTS TO COLLECTORS
The demand for old furniture has become so great that there is an increasing difficulty in supplying it. In order to satisfy the collector many artifices have been practised which in varying degree are difficult to detect, according to the skill and ingenuity of the present-day manufacturer of "antique" furniture.
Replicas of old pieces are frequently made, and the workmanship is so excellent, and the copy of the old craftsman's style so perfect, that it only requires a century or two of wear to give to the specimen the necessary tone which genuine old furniture has naturally acquired.
In particular, French ornate furniture from the days of Boule to the Empire period has received the flattering attention of the fabricator by being imitated in all its details. These high-class French pieces are fine examples of cabinetmaking, and it is not easy for anybody who has not a special expert knowledge to pronounce definitely upon their authenticity. Doubts have even been expressed regarding certain pieces in the great national collections; in fact the art of the forger in regard to old French furniture, of which specimens change hands at anything from £1,000 to £10,000, has reached a very high level of excellence, having almost been elevated to one of the fine arts. If a clever workman possessed of great artistic feeling turns his attention to forging works of art, it is obvious that his triumph is complete over amateurs possessed of less artistic taste and knowledge than himself.
Many secret processes are employed to impart an appearance of age to the wood and to the metal mountings. The cruder methods are to eat off the sharper edges of the metal mountings by means of acid, and to discolour the newer surfaces by the aid of tobacco juice, both of which are not difficult to detect. The steady manufacture of these finer pieces goes on in France, and it has been found that the foggy atmosphere of London is especially useful in producing the effect of age upon the finer work, consequently many forged pieces are shipped to London to be stored in order to ripen until considered fit for the American market, where so many forgeries have been planted. The reward is great, and even considering the amount of trouble bestowed upon such pieces and the excellence of the artistic work where the highest skilled labour is employed, the profit is enormous. The parvenu buys his Louis XIV. or Louis XV. suite, and pays an immense sum for pieces which are stated to have come from some French nobleman's château, whose name must not be divulged, and so the interesting deal is brought to a successful termination.
"MADE-UP" BUFFET.
The middle portion, consisting of the two drawers and three panelled cupboards above, is genuine old carved oak. The stand, with the finely turned legs and rails, and the whole of the upper portion, is modern.
As an object-lesson as to the truth of the above remarks, the Wallace Collection contains a modern French copy in facsimile, by Dasson, of the celebrated "Bureau du Roi" of the Louis XV. period, the original being in the Louvre. The original is fully described in the chapter on Louis XV. style, and it is not too much to assert that ninety-nine per cent. of the visitors to the Collection could not say that this copy was not an old French specimen of over a century and a quarter ago, and the remaining one, unless he happened to be an expert, would not question its genuineness.
Old oak has always been a favourite with the public, and from the modern Flemish monstrosities, carved in evil manner and displaying proportions in the worst possible taste, to the equally vulgar home production in buffet or sideboard, and stocked by many dealers in so-called "antique" furniture, the number of grotesque styles foisted upon the public within the last fifteen years has been remarkable. One wonders what has become of the high-backed oak chairs, nearly black with repeated applications of permanganate of potash, having flaming red-leather seats. They seem to have mysteriously disappeared from up-to-date "antique" stores of late. The public has taken to inquiring into art matters a little more closely. Nowadays the latest thing is "fumed" oak, which is modern oak discoloured by means of ammonia, which darkens the surface of the wood to a depth of a sixteenth of an inch. It is not infrequent to find an attempt made to represent this as old oak after an elaborate treatment with linseed oil, turpentine, and beeswax, though an examination of the interior edges of the wood will discover its modernity at once.
Of course, such tricks as these are not practised by any firm of standing, who cannot afford to damage their reputation by any misrepresentation. As a general rule a dealer will readily point out the details of workmanship and offer technical information of much value to a beginner, if he discovers that his customer is a collector desirous of acquiring only fine specimens. It is more often than not the folly of the public, and not the dishonesty of the dealer, which results in trade frauds being committed in the attempt to execute some impossible and imperative order, which the moneyed collector has given. The difference between the genuine and the replica is most clearly made by old-fashioned firms of high standing. It is only when the collector enters into the arena and endeavours to set forth in quest of bargains, where he pits his skill against that of the dealer in the hope of outwitting the latter, that he is obviously on dangerous ground. In the one case he pays a higher price and obtains the benefit of the experience of a firm with expert knowledge, in the other he relies on his own judgment in picking up a bargain from some one whom he believes to be possessed of less knowledge than himself. If he is successful he is not slow to brag about his cleverness; but if he is worsted in the encounter, and pays, let us say, five pounds for an object which he fondly believed was worth fifty, if genuine, and which he subsequently discovers is worth less than he gave, there is nothing too bad to say concerning his antagonist.