The Saint Paul globe. (St. Paul, Minn.) 1896-1905, 1901-09-15

| high values is a tempting field for the
! interruptions dealer He initiates it just
| as cheaply as he can, and that is at
about a fifth of the price of the genuine
| 1t may surprise the inexperienced to
| know that the genuine old pieces are in
| trinsically worth the price put upon them
| by fair dealers, that new chair, for in
stance, made of the same materials and
with as good workmanship as an old
Chipperdale or Shearton, would have to
be sold higher, if anything, than the old
| piece.
| There is one dealer who makes repro
! auctions of old furniture. The business is
| perfectly legitimate for he does not at
tempt to deceive his customers to the
antiquity of his goods But he charges
even more for them than can be got for
originals. 1t costs so much to make
! these reproductions that he cannot afford
to sell them lower than he does AS for
the buyers, they pay the price because a
perfectly solid new piece is bound to be
more durable than one which has al
ready withstood century ofshard usage.
There is small chance of anybody's be-
| ing cheated in old furniture if he will
study the matter a little and will then
examine closely whatever he buys and
| use his common sense in judging 1t. In
| spite of this, the victims of antique fur
niture dealers seem to be legion.
Last winter firm took a shop in Fifth
avenue and for several months unloadeo
an immense stock of perfectly worthless
antiques upon the gun ible New Workers.
The stuff was all made at the firms fac
| tory, where thirty or forty workmen are
employed turning out cd furniture
Some of it really is old so far as few
! sticks are concerned. The shrewd men
at the head of the concern pick up old
scraps from junkshops or woodpiles. Per-
ic hl1t n ch0jrh9cK
! the standard for a table one carved post
| from an otherwise extinct bed. What
ever it is it makes grist for their mill.
! With one scrap of antiquity they put to-
gether a piece of furniture the like OF
which is not made in this age, nor was
! ever made in any other
Some of their productions had abso-
lTte,y nothing old about them, All of the
stuff was made OF the cheapest materials
! and was simply g.ued together. No one
who knows even the A, B. Z of old fur
niture would have overlooked that point,
| but the people who buy things because
! they look pretty on the auctioneers plat
| form are not the kind to turn piece of
! furniture upside down and see whether
it is put together with the careful dove
| failing the corner blocks, the handmade
wooden pegs of the cabinet makers of
! old.
This firm boasts that it does a rushing
business 1t sends out two or three car
loads of bogus antiques and the men in
charge stop at some good-slZed town,
take an empty storeroom and have a few
days of spirited auctions. Before the fur
niture has had time to fall to pieces, as
it is certain to do before very long, they
pack up what they have left and move
on to another town.
Somewhat curiously Boston and Phil
adelphia are the two towns in this coun-
try which are notorious for this whole
sale manufacture of the spurious antique.
Plenty of it is made in New York. We
have no reason to be pharisaical in the
matter. But in most cases, the individual
dealers have their own workmen turn out
only what they think they can pass off
in the ordinary run Of trade
If these limitations were as well made
as the antique which they purport to be
the deception might almost be pardoned.
But they are hopeleS5ly inferior. One
man who is in the business says that he
knows of only one cabinet maker in town
whose work is equal to that done a hun
Gred years ago. He is German, who
has his own shop near Fourth avenue.
The antiquity business is growing larg-
er every year. The number of dealers
multiplieS so fast though, that not many
of them are coming money as the popu-
lar fancy pictures them. Worse than
that, the days of picking up bargains
from private houses have gone by.
People think nowadays that any old
cracked teapot which may have belonged
to the gTeat-grandfather Is worth its
weight in silver. From having no idea
that old things were valuable they have
come to the point where they nave the
most eXtravagant notions.
The antiquity stocks are recruited now
principally from the small collections.
People have a short-lived mania for an
tiqueS. Then they get hard up and they
sell off their collection. In that way
dealers very often handle the same
! pieces several times and can spin long
romantic histories about them.
| When it comes to bogus antiques there
| is perhaps no field that is harder worked
made the day before yesterday are label
| ed with an eighteenth century date and
marked with name or initials just as
! the genuine old ones were. The chief
J point of difference between the new and
! the old pieces is the quality of pewter.
! That in the modern limitations contains
| too much lead and is soft and coarse
! grained. 1t will not take the fine, SATIN
! like polish of which good old pewter Is
! capable.
Sheffield plate is another favorite with
| the counterfeiters of antiques A good
! deal Of plate is made in England after
! the old designs and is sold as Sheffield,
! but the fraud can easily be detected by
uncoVerinG part Of the foundation,
! which in the plate made now is whit
metal. Sheffield plate" was general
/ term given to pieces made of copper sill
yer plate Afterwards a cheaper substl-
tute for copper was in demand, and at
first German silver was used. 1t was
| found too soft, and was superseded by
! an alley of the German silver and brass
If your Sheffield plate has not copper
for a base, therefore, it is not Sheffield.
A curious example of the carelessness
/ in detail which almost always marks
/ the work of antique counterfeiters is to
be found in a lot of pewter porringers.
They are of excellent pewter and were
m nv q U a
smith. He made the pewter, or had it
! made, and put in his odd moments spin
| ming the bowls of these porringers. Up
to that point his product was first
he had a lot of lead ones cast, and these
| he soldered on to the fine pewter bowls.
This is only one instance of the invaria-
bic fact that the bogus antique is certain
! to give its counterfeit character away if
one only looks carefully enough for the
evidence
One dealer told how near he was to
being deceived by what was alleged to be
a fine old crown teapot. The piece was
in shop in Scotland and was apparent
ly genuine But the American could not
quite satisfy himself that it was not an
He could not find a flaw, but, as he
said, he felt that something was wrong.
He went back to the place several times
and studied the piece and finally he found
his flaw; there was none of the faint
stain which tea gives to the edges of
a teapot. He taxed the Scotchman with
the fraud, and the latter finally admitted
that the piece was not genuine.
But why hadn't the Scotchman kept
the teapot in bath of tea so as to give
it the right STAMP asked the greenhorn
who heard the story.
Because he hadn't thought of it, That
is the salvation of us dealers and of ex-
pert collectors. There is always some
thing which the counterfeiter doesn't
think of or doesn't think we will think of
Gle