THE “MODERN ANTIQUE”
Much of the glass sold in the smaller curio-shops as “antique” was not made to deceive: it is the offering of it in such places which intends fraud. Most English-made reproductions of old glass in shape and cutting were not intended by the manufacturer to delude a collector, but to attract the ordinary buyer for table use or decorative use; one who is not a collector but “likes something that looks old-fashioned,” as he says.
Pawnbrokers’ and jewellers’ shops are stocked with what is called in the trade “the modern antique”; other examples of this are the cheap, hasty, and obvious copies of miniatures of famous beauties set in new paste frames and sold for a few shillings. In pawnshops and ordinary glass-shop windows a collector sees spiral-stem wine glasses made for modern use and not intended to deceive; they are a kind of tawdrily ornamental hock glass, embodying some modern designer’s idea of what is beautiful; they correspond with no antique shape of bowl, the stems are very thin and fragile, the feet are as small as or smaller than the rim of the bowl, and the spirals are parti-coloured and “tight.” No collector need be taken in by such as these—they were not made to take him in, they are ordinary articles of modern manufacture and daily commerce.
So are the white glass bowls, tazzas, centre-pieces, vases, “specimen glasses,” etc., elaborately cut, perhaps engraved also, and meant for modern tables and mantelpieces. These are copies of the fine old ware simply because the old ware affords good models, and the information given in chapter ii of this book will enable a collector to recognize the modernity of these honest imitations, even when they are found (as they often are) in a shop supposed to purvey antiques.
OUT-OF-THE-WAY PIECES
I do not say that very unusual and out-of-the-way pieces of old glass should be avoided; as the collecting of glass increases, many rare old things will be brought out of cupboards and sold in shops. But I do say that, as a rule, a collector should feel suspicious of any piece not resembling those which are pictured in books like this, or those seen in museum collections. Thus a tall, bulky goblet engraved with a portrait of William Pitt or Wellington, and inscribed accordingly, if it is offered for 30s., say, is highly suspicious, to say the least of it; and the safer course is to refuse apparent bargains of the kind.
FAKED JACOBITE GLASSES, ETC.
This applies even more to the pseudo-Jacobite, Williamite, Nelson, and other famous glasses which are offered. They may be old glasses “engraved up,” in which case the only mode of detection is the quality, finish and tint of the engraving. They may be English-made modern glass, of the right ring and the old way of manufacture; in which case the test of tint in the glass itself may be added to the test of the engraving. In either case the engraving may too closely reproduce an original glass; it is seldom that two old glasses of this type exactly resemble each other in the position of the various emblems, portraits, and so on: for example, the word Fiat is hardly ever found in exactly the same place on two real old glasses. If the pseudo-Jacobite or other engraved glass fails to respond to the characteristics of high instep or domed foot, tint, ring, etc., or any of these, it should be rejected.