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.