antiques

This page considers fraud and the forgery of antiques, dismissed by one critic as "genuine Chippendale, circa 2002".

It covers -

• introduction -
• detection

     introduction

Misrepresentation, complaisance, gullibility and forgery of outside the fine arts mirrors the environment discussed on the preceding page of this profile, although generally not attracting the same attention from the media or from government agencies.

As with Old Master paintings the market for lesser collectibles is driven by greed, enthusiasm and the self-interest of intermediaries, who on occasion turn a blind eye or are actively complicit in misrepresentation of what is being sold.

How much forgery is there in the antiques market? Definitive figures are unavailable and much of the literature does not go beyond anecdote or comments such as "the amount of fraud in the antiques business is getting worse".

That is unsurprising, given the shape of the market - much trade does not involve major commercial galleries and auction houses, few vendors and buyers are keen to publicise unwelcome discoveries - and concentration by police on other crimes. As one dealer commented to us, much much misbehaviour is not widely reported and probably is not generally detected. "It is off the radar and is likely to stay that way".

It is rare to see incidents such as the embarrassingly public compensation of Canadian mogul Herbert Black, who paid around £0.5 million for two supposedly Hepplewhite chairs from the St Giles's House collection, US$4.5 million litigation by a Thomson scion over a pair of allegedly 18th-century urns or claims in 2008 by restorer Dennis Buggins (apparently substantiated by photographs and workshop records) that leading UK dealer John Hobbs had been selling concocted antique furniture (including a table for a mere US$736,000) during at least a decade. It is even harder to find detailed statistics for items sold in the $500 to $50,000 range.

One reason is inherent uncertainty about authenticity, compounded by the absence of accessible benchmarks or published expertise. Another is indifference, with vendors for example adopting a 'caveat emptor' approach that is broadly endorsed by regulators. As with buying a quattrecento masterpiece over eBay (or in your local pub), if it looks too good to be true it almost certainly is.

Furniture and other artefacts that have not been considered to be of museum quality generally do not have a readily identifiable provenance. The genuineness of minor works may be hard to quickly determine: "it is old, but is it old enough ... and is all of it old enough"?

Many antiques have suffered the ravages of time and have been repaired, either recently or in the past. How much reconstitution is permitted before an item ceases to be an authentic antique, given that fakes include new items made out of antique materials, old items modified to make them seem better than they are and old parts put together to simulate a more desirable form? For many buyers the cost of consultation with experts or detailed forensic examination will often be more than the price of an item.

As with the fine arts one reason for forgery is simply the limits of supply. Demand continues to grow but antiques are a nonrenewable resource and, like the Manet or Sisley, the most desirable pieces are increasingly sequestered in museums.

Another reason is pricing: major works when available now go for seven figures (eg £17 million for the Badminton Cabinet in 2004, US$10.9 million for a Jean-Henri Riesenerin commode in 1999, US$8.2 million for the Job Townsend secretary-bookcase in 2000 and US$1.2 million for a weathervane). Thatcher Freund's Objects of Desire: The Lives of Antiques and Those Who Pursue Them (New York: Penguin 1995) notes a tension in collecting.

Shaker chairs and windvanes, for example, have been seen as affordable by consumers and institutions unable to compete for a Louis XVI chair but the interaction of growing popularity and limited supply pushes prices beyond the means of many consumers, who often colonise new fields such as 1860s quilts, rolling pins and fishing lures that in turn experience rapid escalation in prices (and the appearance of items that are not as they seem).

One point of reference is Myrna Kaye's Fake, Fraud or Genuine? Identifying Authentic American Antique Furniture (Boston: Little Brown 1987).

     detection

As with other collectibles, there is disagreement about mechanisms for detection that an item has been forged or merely has been knowingly misrepresented by a vendor.

One caution is that if an item seems too good to be true it often is. Buyers should beware, questioning a vendor's bona fides (or merely expertise, as a dud attribution may well be given in good faith by someone who lacks appropriate skills and experience). Provenance documentation can be useful, although as noted in preceding pages such documentation may be concocted and few buyers have the forensic expertise to differentiate between what is genuine and what is a real sales slip from 1880 or 1921 even if such material is extant.

Many valuers, buyers and vendors rely on physical examination of what is on offer. That examination does not necessarily involve the metallurgical or dendrochronological analysis highlighted later in this profile. Instead it the reality that most antiques were designed to be used, rather than preserved in a museum vitrine, and thus exhibit signs of wear and tear. Those signs should appear in the correct places, although high-end forgers are adept at simulating what should be there or hiding fakery in the guise of a past 'restoration'.

Signs of inauthenticity in furniture include -

• improbable patination or other signs of surface distress - chair legs, for example, are typically dented at the bottom rather than the top
• variations in the colour consistency of an antique - differences in the colour of the underside, side, back or even interior of an item may indicate that it has been restored, has been unevenly exposed to light in a particular location or instead has been cobbled together
• perfection - wood shrinks with the grain, fittings loosen over time, crisp joints and perfect surfaces are suspect. Veneers prior to late 1840s were typically cut by hand: a very thin veneer on an old item may signal that it is inauthentic or has been restored
• if the wood grain is undetectable or looks 'muddy' that may be an indicator that something's awry, as fakers often rely on polish or paint to disguise their handiwork
• antique buyers, like some parents, often prefer twins (or sets) - if surfaces and undersides do not match one item in a set may be a copy.

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