New Britain herald., 1916-02-24
COLLEGE PROFESSOR
 |N$lOO,000 SPINDLE
Wellesley Instructor Buys. "An- tique" Temple Fifty Years Old

New York, Feb. 24.-If Professor William Hewson Baltzell of Wellesley mad not started judicial proceedings to recover customs duties alleged to have been illegally assessed, he probably would have lived to the end of his days believing he possessed a genuine round stone temple of the seventeenth century. But this idea Of the edifice now on the ground of the professor s estate at Wellesley was rudelN dis pelled yestcdaN wh cn the United States court of customs appeals, in a deci- sion by Judge Barber declared that the temple was less than fifty years o1d
 Judge Barber took occasion. how ever, to remark that no imputation of deception was put upon the importer who had acted in entire good faith in contesting what he deemed unjust duty. The court also took notice of the fact that experts, among them Profes- sor Paul W. Hoffman, who testified that he had a laboratory in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts and did all the restoring and preserving for that instt- tuition, were deceived as to the age of the temple, which it had been believed was ar old copy of an ancient shrine to the Greek god Pallas.
 SwindIe Near S1OO.OOO
 The sum paid by Professor Baltzell to bogus art dealers in Italy for the temple was said to be close to s1OO,- 900, and when it arrived at the Boston custom house the officials demanded fortyfive per cent. ad valorem on the ground that it was only a "manufac- ture of marble" Kenneth HOwes counsel for the professor, sued for the return of the duty, the plea being that as the temple was more than 100 years old and was duty free under the tariff provision for "artistic antiquities"
 MT. Howes told the court his client made no pretense of antiquity so far as the iron dome round marble table and certain other furnishings were concerned, but insisted that the temple itself was in the class intended by congress to be duty free
 Dr. Hoffman testified that after ap- plying various scientific tests to the marble of the temple he thought it was 25O or 300 years old.
 Government witnesses gave many reasons why the temple could not pos slbly be so old Clarence l.. Lersner, examiner of antiques at the Port of NeW Ork, said:
 This temple, I should say, belongs to the French Renaissance period, perhaps late in the fourteenth century and the claim of age was correct as to architectural form. F'urth CT eXamina-
 ton to determine whether the parts were executed in 9, manner correspond ing to the type and whether the stone pore the physical appearance of age, l found that that was entirely un- founded"
 MT. Lersner found the wokma nship highly inferior, that much of it had been wrought by machinery which he was certain was not employed "before the introduction of steel.'
 Coffee Alcohol to Age It.
 A. P. Nardini, an artist, thought the marble had been treated with "coffee, alcohol and other things to make it appear old. Asked as to how the workmanship compared with examples of Italian sculpture and architecture 200 to 300 years ago, MT. Nardini re- piled: "I consider that very poor very poor work" Other government wit 1 nesSeS were of the same opinion.
 Coming to the age of Professor Bait ! zells importation. Judge Barber gave ] it as the court view that much of the l governm ent's testimony negativcd the ! testimony of the importer relative to l