Thirty years ago the country was being flooded with fake antique silverware from England. In many cases an old hallmark—authentic in itself and perhaps 200 years old—would appear on a beautiful teapot. To all outward appearances the teapot was an authentic antique 200 years old. But what had happened was that an expert silversmith had lifted the hallmark from an inexpensive spoon and then soldered it into the teapot so smoothly that only an expert could detect the fakery.
There is little chance for such fraud today, even though dealers and collectors import each year more than $2 million worth of antique silver and old Sheffield, largely from England. Much of the credit for this protection is due to a dapper little man named Nathan Nathanson, who is one of the world’s leading experts on silverware. Nathanson is a small, bouncing man with a bristling black moustache and an infectious enthusiasm for his work. He was reared in Brooklyn and as a boy served as a jeweler’s apprentice. He became fascinated with metals and gems. The youth haunted museums, art galleries, antique dealers’ showrooms, and libraries, studying everything he could find on the subject of silver and old jewelry. He pursued his interests with study at Columbia University and then joined the Customs Bureau, where he quickly became recognized as an authority in his field. As a result of these years of study, Nathanson usually can tell within five years when an antique piece of silverware was made, the name of the artisan who made it, the city in which it was made, and the original owner of the piece. This he is able to do through his knowledge of the hallmarks on the silver—the symbols which were first stamped into silver pieces by the ancient guilds of England during the reign of King Edward I in the year 1300.
During the last 200 years, hallmarks have been an important guide to those versed in the lore of old silver. But of equal importance is a knowledge of the patina of old silver—that mellow coloration which is given to silver only by time and which no one yet has been able to duplicate. The expert must also know the distinctive designs from each period.
Unscrupulous silversmiths have several methods of faking antique silver. The most commonly used fraud is the transfer of a famous hallmark from a small piece of silver to a large tray, coffee pot or teapot, a process known as “sweating.”
One simple method to detect such a graft is to breathe on the hallmark. The warm breath in most cases will make the graft lines show up. The infallible method is to heat the silver—and this can only be done safely by an expert. Under strong heat the graft lines come into view.
Another method of forgery is to take a valuable and authentically old piece of silver, make a cast of it, and from the casting create a duplicate. The new silver piece is “aged” with an artificial patina. But no matter how good this job might be, the forgers always leave after casting tiny marks and other imperfections which the expert is able to spot by close study. Nathanson insists that even if the job were so well done that an expert missed the telltale marks, he could not be fooled by a phony patina.
Nathanson and his colleagues have their own quiet moments of triumph when they pit their knowledge against that of well-known importers. In one case a New York importer objected to paying duty on a loving cup which obviously was much more than a century old and qualified in his opinion for free entry. He argued that this loving cup was absolutely authentic and that all Nathanson had to do was look at the patina of the silver and also at the hallmarks. “Anyone can recognize those hallmarks and see that they are legitimate,” the importer said.
But Nathanson was quite sure there was something wrong with this piece of silver. The design was not quite right for its period. The hallmarks were genuine. There was no evidence that they had been tampered with. The patina, without doubt, was that of a very old piece of silver, and the sheen could not have been imparted by any chicanery.
Finally he suggested to the importer that they take the loving cup to the workshop of the importer, where his own silversmith could heat it to a near-melting point without doing damage. As they watched the silversmith carefully heat the silver, Nathanson saw that his suspicion was justified. The heat showed up definite lines where a spout had been removed from the “loving cup” and the hole patched over very expertly with silver to change the shape of a teapot and convert it to a loving cup.
Under the law, this piece of silver—even though it was far more than a century old—could not meet the requirements for free importation because it had been changed from its original form.