Chats on Old Furniture Part 17

Christie, June 2, 1904 105 0 0

Bookcase, 4 ft. 8 in., mahogany, Heppelwhite, inlaid tulip-wood with box and ebony lines, fitted shelves and drawers, enclosed by doors. Phillips, Son and Neale, November 17, 1903 44 0 0

Settee, Heppelwhite, square-shaped, 6 ft., and three elbow chairs. Gudgeon & Sons, Winchester, March 9, 1904 38 0 0

Console-table, Heppelwhite satinwood, the top shaped as a broken ellipse, and of hare-wood with inlays of husks and flowers round a fan-pattern centre with borderings in ebony and other woods on a filling of satinwood; the edge is bound with ormolu, reeded and cross banded, below is the frieze of satin-wood inlaid with honeysuckle, paterae, and other ornament in holly, &c., and supported on a pair of carved square tapered legs painted and gilt, and with pendants of husks and acanthus capitals, 4 ft. 3 in. wide. Flashman & Co., Dover, April 26, 1904 40 0 0

Suite of Heppelwhite mahogany furniture, with open shield backs, with vase-shaped centres carved, the back, arms and legs widely fluted, consisting of a settee, 74 in.

wide, and ten armchairs. Christie, June 2, 1904 325 10 0

Knife-box, oblong, Sheraton mahogany, with revolving front, inlaid with Prince-of-Wales's feathers and borders in satinwood, 19-1/2 in. wide. Christie, November 21, 1902 7 17 6

Sideboard, Sheraton, mahogany, satinwood inlaid, fitted with bra.s.s rails. Dowell, Edinburgh, November 14, 1903 30 9 0

Wardrobe, Sheraton mahogany, banded with satinwood, with folding doors above and below, and five drawers in the centre, 7 ft. high, 8 ft. wide. Christie, January 22, 1904 60 18 0

Chairs, set of eighteen Sheraton, with oval backs with rail centres, fluted and slightly carved with foliage and beading, the seats covered with flowered crimson damask; and a pair of settees, _en suite_, 6 ft. wide. Christie, February 26, 1904 126 0 0

Armchairs, pair, Sheraton, with shield-shaped backs, painted with Prince of Wales feathers, and pearl ornament on black ground. Christie, March 28, 1904 28 7 0

Cabinet, Sheraton satinwood, with glazed folding doors enclosing shelves, drawer in the centre forming secretary, and folding-doors below, painted with baskets of flowers, &c., 7 ft. 9 in. high, 41 in. wide.

Christie, March 28, 1904 189 0 0

Secretaire, Sheraton small satinwood, with revolving tambour front, drawer and folding doors below, inlaid with arabesque foliage, 23 in. wide. Christie, April 29, 1904 47 5 0

[1] By the kindness of the proprietors of the _Connoisseur_ these items are given from their useful monthly publication, _Auction Sale Prices_.

XII

HINTS TO COLLECTORS

[Ill.u.s.tration: DESIGN FOR SPURIOUS MARQUETRY WORK.]

XII

HINTS TO COLLECTORS

The demand for old furniture has become so great that there is an increasing difficulty in supplying it. In order to satisfy the collector many artifices have been practised which in varying degree are difficult to detect, according to the skill and ingenuity of the present-day manufacturer of "antique" furniture.

Replicas of old pieces are frequently made, and the workmanship is so excellent, and the copy of the old craftsman's style so perfect, that it only requires a century or two of wear to give to the specimen the necessary tone which genuine old furniture has naturally acquired.

In particular, French ornate furniture from the days of Boule to the Empire period has received the flattering attention of the fabricator by being imitated in all its details. These high-cla.s.s French pieces are fine examples of cabinetmaking, and it is not easy for anybody who has not a special expert knowledge to p.r.o.nounce definitely upon their authenticity. Doubts have even been expressed regarding certain pieces in the great national collections; in fact the art of the forger in regard to old French furniture, of which specimens change hands at anything from 1,000 to 10,000, has reached a very high level of excellence, having almost been elevated to one of the fine arts. If a clever workman possessed of great artistic feeling turns his attention to forging works of art, it is obvious that his triumph is complete over amateurs possessed of less artistic taste and knowledge than himself.

Many secret processes are employed to impart an appearance of age to the wood and to the metal mountings. The cruder methods are to eat off the sharper edges of the metal mountings by means of acid, and to discolour the newer surfaces by the aid of tobacco juice, both of which are not difficult to detect. The steady manufacture of these finer pieces goes on in France, and it has been found that the foggy atmosphere of London is especially useful in producing the effect of age upon the finer work, consequently many forged pieces are shipped to London to be stored in order to ripen until considered fit for the American market, where so many forgeries have been planted. The reward is great, and even considering the amount of trouble bestowed upon such pieces and the excellence of the artistic work where the highest skilled labour is employed, the profit is enormous. The parvenu buys his Louis XIV. or Louis XV. suite, and pays an immense sum for pieces which are stated to have come from some French n.o.bleman's chateau, whose name must not be divulged, and so the interesting deal is brought to a successful termination.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "MADE-UP" BUFFET.

The middle portion, consisting of the two drawers and three panelled cupboards above, is genuine old carved oak. The stand, with the finely turned legs and rails, and the whole of the upper portion, is modern.]

As an object-lesson as to the truth of the above remarks, the Wallace Collection contains a modern French copy in facsimile, by Da.s.son, of the celebrated "Bureau du Roi" of the Louis XV. period, the original being in the Louvre. The original is fully described in the chapter on Louis XV. style, and it is not too much to a.s.sert that ninety-nine per cent.

of the visitors to the Collection could not say that this copy was not an old French specimen of over a century and a quarter ago, and the remaining one, unless he happened to be an expert, would not question its genuineness.

Old oak has always been a favourite with the public, and from the modern Flemish monstrosities, carved in evil manner and displaying proportions in the worst possible taste, to the equally vulgar home production in buffet or sideboard, and stocked by many dealers in so-called "antique"

furniture, the number of grotesque styles foisted upon the public within the last fifteen years has been remarkable. One wonders what has become of the high-backed oak chairs, nearly black with repeated applications of permanganate of potash, having flaming red-leather seats. They seem to have mysteriously disappeared from up-to-date "antique" stores of late. The public has taken to inquiring into art matters a little more closely. Nowadays the latest thing is "fumed" oak, which is modern oak discoloured by means of ammonia, which darkens the surface of the wood to a depth of a sixteenth of an inch. It is not infrequent to find an attempt made to represent this as old oak after an elaborate treatment with linseed oil, turpentine, and beeswax, though an examination of the interior edges of the wood will discover its modernity at once.

Of course, such tricks as these are not practised by any firm of standing, who cannot afford to damage their reputation by any misrepresentation. As a general rule a dealer will readily point out the details of workmanship and offer technical information of much value to a beginner, if he discovers that his customer is a collector desirous of acquiring only fine specimens. It is more often than not the folly of the public, and not the dishonesty of the dealer, which results in trade frauds being committed in the attempt to execute some impossible and imperative order, which the moneyed collector has given. The difference between the genuine and the replica is most clearly made by old-fashioned firms of high standing. It is only when the collector enters into the arena and endeavours to set forth in quest of bargains, where he pits his skill against that of the dealer in the hope of outwitting the latter, that he is obviously on dangerous ground. In the one case he pays a higher price and obtains the benefit of the experience of a firm with expert knowledge, in the other he relies on his own judgment in picking up a bargain from some one whom he believes to be possessed of less knowledge than himself. If he is successful he is not slow to brag about his cleverness; but if he is worsted in the encounter, and pays, let us say, five pounds for an object which he fondly believed was worth fifty, if genuine, and which he subsequently discovers is worth less than he gave, there is nothing too bad to say concerning his antagonist.

It is chiefly by the character of carved work that old pieces can be recognised. There are three cla.s.ses of pitfalls to avoid.

1. Fraudulent pieces throughout, of modern wood and of modern carving.

2. "Made-up" pieces which often consist of genuine old pieces of carved wood pieced together ingeniously from fragments of carvings, with modern additions.

3. "Restored" pieces which are mainly old and should have received, if admitted to a collection, only the necessary repairs to make them serviceable.

With regard to the first cla.s.s, fraudulent throughout, it is the hope of the writer that enough has already been written in this volume to point the way to the reader and to a.s.sist him to follow his natural inclinations in developing the necessary critical taste to readily detect pieces wholly false in character and feeling.

"Made-up" pieces present a greater difficulty. Considerable skill has been exercised in combining certain parts of old furniture into a whole which is, however, mostly inharmonious. In pieces of this nature there is an absence of feeling in style and carving. It is difficult to define the exact meaning of the word "feeling" as applied to art objects, it is a subtle expression of skill and poetry which communicates itself to the lover of art. It is so subtle and elusive that experts will tell one that such and such a piece requires to be "lived with" to test its authenticity. Mr. Frederick Roe, whose volume on "Ancient Coffers and Cupboards" displays a profound knowledge of his subject, writes, "it occasionally happens that pieces are so artfully made up that only living with them will enable the collector to detect the truth. In dealing with pieces of this suspicious kind one often has to fall back on a sort of instinct. With critical collectors of every sort this innate sense plays a very important part."

Two specimens of "made-up" furniture are reproduced, which will bear close study in order to appreciate the difficulty of collecting old oak.

The ill.u.s.tration of the buffet (p. 261) has many points of interest. The general appearance of the piece is not inharmonious. It has been carefully thought out and no less carefully put into effect. The middle portion, consisting of the three drawers and the three cupboards above, up to and including the shelf part.i.tion at the top, is the only old part. The handles, locks, and escutcheons of the two drawers are old, but the hinges above are modern copies of old designs, and the handles of the cupboards are modern replicas.

[Ill.u.s.tration: CABINET OF OLD OAK.

MADE UP FROM SEVERAL PIECES OF GENUINE OLD CARVED OAK.]

The ma.s.sive stand with artistically turned rails in Jacobean style, is soft wood artfully fumed and generously beeswaxed. The whole of the top portion has been added and is soft wood very well carved. The carving of the panels is also well executed, and is evidently a copy of some old design.

The older portion is a fine piece of early Jacobean work, and it is not difficult to distinguish between the feeling of this and the expression conveyed by the modern woodwork. The patina of the wood after two centuries of exposure and polishing has that peculiarly pleasing appearance which accompanies genuine old woodwork. The edges of the carving have lost their sharp angles, and the mellowness of the middle panels are in strong contrast to the harsher tone of those of the upper portion.

Such a piece as this would not deceive an expert, nor, perhaps, is it intended to, or greater care would have been bestowed upon it, but it is sufficiently harmonious in composition not to offend in a glaring manner, and might easily deceive a tyro.

The next piece ill.u.s.trated (p. 267) is interesting from another point of view. It is a more elaborate attempt to produce a piece of old furniture in which the details themselves have all the mellowness of fine old oak.

In fact, with the exception of one portion, some eight inches by three, to which allusion will be made later, the whole of it is genuine old oak.

The three panels at the top are finely carved and are Jacobean work. The two outside panels at the bottom, though of a later period, are good work. The middle panel at the bottom is evidently a portion of a larger piece of carving, because the pattern abruptly breaks off, and it was most certainly not designed by the old carver to lie on its side in this fashion.

The two heads at the top corners have been cut from some old specimen, and artfully laid on. The carving on both sides, running below each head from top to bottom, is of two distinct designs joined in each case in a line level with the upper line of the lower panels. The two uprights on each side of the middle lower panel are exquisite pieces of carved work, but certainly never intended to be upright. They are evidently portions of a long, flowing ornament, as their cut-off appearance too plainly shows.

The top panels have done duty elsewhere, as part of the ornamental carving at the top and bottom of each lozenge is lost. The long line of scrolled carving above them is distinctly of interest. On the left hand, from the head to the middle of the panel, a piece of newer carving has been inserted, some eight inches long. The wood, at one time darkened to correspond with the adjacent carving, has become lighter, which is always the case when wood is stained to match other portions. The carving in this new portion follows in every detail the lines of the older design, and is a very pretty piece of "faking."