Riccardo Nobili

Carved wood—Artistic furniture—Wood staining and patina—The merits of elbow-grease—Painted and lacquered furniture—Veneer and inlaid work—Musical instruments—Imitations and fakers of musical instruments—Connoisseurship of musical instruments twofold—Attribution and labels—Some good imitators—The violin as example—The restoration and odd adventures of well-known musical instruments—Legends and anecdotes that help—Analysis of form and of sound—Rossini’s saying.

The finest pieces of faked furniture are very rarely entirely new, sometimes they are old pieces to which rich ornaments have been added; at other times, and this is the most common occurrence, they are put together from fragments belonging to two, three, or even four different pieces, the parts and debris, in fact, of old broken furniture. There is also the entirely new fake imitating old furniture, but this is rarely as convincing as the other which is the really dangerous type even for an experienced collector.

Impressed by the great amount of faked furniture glutting the Paris market, Paul Eudel says, “in principle there is no more such a thing as antique furniture. All that is sold is false or terribly repaired.”

In Italy, that inexhaustible mine of past art, it is still possible to find genuine pieces, provided, of course, that the collector does not insist upon having those first-rate pieces now belonging to museums or collections formed several years ago. There are, however, in Italy, as in every other country, modern productions of antique furniture for the novices in the collector’s career. This furniture may be carved out of old pieces of wood or ordinary wood. In both cases it is generally necessary to give an old colouring to the wood, for which there are a variety of methods according to the desired effect, tone, colour, etc. Many use walnut-juice, others permanganate of potash, and still others the more drastic system of burning the surface of the wood with acid. The old way of imitating worm-holes was to use buckshot, a ridiculous method which nevertheless had its vogue and apparently satisfied the gross eye of some collectors. Nowadays worm-holes are made with an instrument that imitates them to perfection, although they do not go so deep as the genuine ones, and this difference, by the way, is one of the tests to tell real worm-holes from spurious ones. As new furniture that imitates old is generally too sharp-edged and neatly finished, it is usually subjected to a regular course of ill-treatment. French dealers call this process “aviler un meuble,” and it consists of pounding with heavy sticks, rubbing with sand-paper, pumice, etc.

The finishing touch, that peculiar polished surface characterizing ancient furniture, is usually given by friction with wool after a slight coating of benzine in which a little wax has been dissolved. The less wax used and the more elbow-grease, the more will the polish resemble that of real old furniture and the more difficult does it become to detect the deceit. If much wax has been used the scratch of a needle is sufficient to reveal even the thinnest layer, but if it is so imperceptible as to stand this test it is very difficult to tell the real from the imitation. The polished parts of an old piece of furniture are not casual but the result of long use. Prominent parts are naturally, therefore, the ones to get so polished rather than other parts.

I remember witnessing a curious sight one day when admitted to the sanctum of a well-known antiquary. Half a dozen stools had been repaired, most generously repaired, a new patina had been given and now they were to receive the last touches, the polished parts that add such charm to old furniture. The workman who had half finished the job kept passing and repassing close to the stools which he had arranged in a row, rubbing his legs against each one. I asked him the meaning of the performance and he answered that as there were no sharp edges on the lower part of those sixteenth-century walnut stools, he wanted to find out where and to what extent they would be most polished by use. Not having a genuine stool from which to copy, he had resorted to this means so as to make no mistake. I very nearly asked him if he thought everyone was the same height and had the same length of leg. But as the work proceeded I gathered from the practical application of his method, better than I could have done from any explanation, that he was endeavouring to get a mere hint, where to begin to rub with his pad, in order to produce that vague patch of hollows one notices sometimes in church benches.

The same patience is necessary in making imitation worm-holes, which are so cunningly distributed, so convincingly worked in their erratic manner of piercing wood as to suggest to Edmond BonnaffÉ the fine bit of sarcasm: “Des vers savants chargÉs de fouiller le bois neuf À la demande.”

That piecemeal kind of furniture, the parts of which are unquestionably antique but of various origins, being the remains of more than one piece of furniture—l’assemblage, as the French call it—may prove a danger to the best connoisseurs if done well and with taste. In certain respects the piece is genuinely antique, but not exactly as the collector understands the word, hence its fraudulency entitles it to be classified among fakes. It is incredible what an industrious antiquary is able to do in the way of piecing furniture together. This consists not merely of finding a top for table-legs, or legs for a table-top, but there is no limit to the invention of this piecemeal furniture. A wooden door may furnish the back of a throne when well matched with a rich old coffer; the gilded ornamentation of an altar may be transformed into the head of a Louis XV bed, and so on. In the same way a simple piece of furniture may be enriched by attaching ornaments, coats of arms, etc. The whole is invariably toned and harmonized by means of one of the above-mentioned methods.

Naturally, ignorance of style sometimes leads some fakers to extremely amusing blunders, but it must be confessed the cases are rare, and this piecemeal furniture has been palmed off on too many connoisseurs, and graces too many well-reputed collections to be dismissed with a smile of incredulity. Were antiquaries more disposed to talk or less indulgent towards the conceit of collectors, it might be learnt that all the rich furniture sold during the last twenty years to museums and collectors belongs to this composite order.

A special branch of the imitation of antique furniture is inlaid work, the French marqueterie and Italian tarsia, by which designs are traced upon the surface by inlaying wood, ivory or metal. There are various epochs and styles of inlaid furniture. One may begin with the geometrical patterns of the Trecento or the cappuccino of about the same time and later, and gradually pass through the many styles and methods to the complex ornamentation of Buhl’s work.

The early work, including the cappuccino, a peculiar inlaid ivory work with geometric patterns, is very well imitated in Italy where restorers of this kind of furniture generally turn into good imitators, and become at times impenitent fakers of the most fantastic would-be old style. Skill in inlaying wood and ivory according to different epochs and the ordinary collector’s love of ornamented furniture have suggested to some imitators the most absurd combinations of styles, a riot of incongruity and incompatibility. It is not rare to see fine chairs that would otherwise be tasteful but for the heavy ornamentation of inlaid wood or ivory arabesques, grotesques, etc. The outrage of having a fifteenth-century, inlaid after the style and designs of at least a century later, is not uncommonly excused by the explanation that it appeals to the tawdry taste of customers and that the article commands a higher price by the addition of the heavy incongruous ornamentation.

This peculiar form of degeneration in taste, the passion for excessive ornamentation, is also what often mars the imitations of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century painted furniture, imitations of the Venetian style especially being generally very carelessly finished but overcharged with gilding and cheap bits of painted ornamentation.

French imitations in this line are not so debased as some Italian, but like them they are not very convincing, as it is almost impossible to imitate the French eighteenth-century gilding, and the carving of this epoch shows such neatness and is so clean cut that the gilded parts assume an appearance of metal, a quality that the modern industry of antiques does not find convenient or is unable to imitate. The French Buhl also is often imitated with celluloid instead of tortoise-shell and can only succeed in attracting the very easily satisfied collector. This is the case with some other cheap imitations overcharged with ordinary gilded bronze. By the side of these specimens, however, French art also counts some excellent imitations done by real artists, which if not successful in deceiving experienced collectors are nevertheless regular chefs-d’oeuvre in the art of imitating the finest and richest pieces of the Louis XV and Louis XVI styles.

The simplicity and purity of line that characterized English styles from the end of the seventeenth century to the best period of the next, helped to keep the imitators of this country within bounds. Their fancy in any case was less inventive and less disastrously enterprising than that of the cheap imitators of Italian furniture.

Before leaving the subject, we may say that many of the walnut panels in furniture, which appear to be so elaborately carved, are not carved at all but burnt into the desired patterns. The process consists of making a good cast iron matrix from a fine bas-relief, then heating it and pressing it upon the wood by a special procedure by which all the superfluous wood is burnt away and the rest takes the shape of the mould. This method not only gives the wood the desired form in perfect imitation of carving, but the burning stains it to a fine brown tone very much resembling old wood, after which an application of oil or encaustic is sufficient to give it a semblance of patina.

In another part of this book we have noted that in Bologna more especially imitations of old tables are placed for a time in cheap restaurants where, through grease, dirt and rough wear and tear, they acquire that fine patina so highly esteemed in ancient wood. Such pieces are not only found in towns but are housed here and there about the country, sometimes in old palaces and villas, or else in out of the way nooks. The former system gives the alluring sensation of buying something really worth while, and at first hand, from its historical owner; the latter that a real find has been discovered, that find which is the eternal fata Morgana of freshman collectors.

Imitations of musical instruments vary according to the style of the instrument and its musical quality. In some fakes the musical quality is of minor importance to a certain extent, the artistic properties and ornamentation being the chief consideration with the collector. In other instruments the quality of the tone is of importance, so that though the form may not be neglected, the faker must bear in mind that his imitation will have to stand a double test: it must satisfy the ear and stand the examination of an experienced eye.

The first class includes collectively such instruments as are no longer in use and are highly ornamented with carving, inlaid work or gilding such as lutes, archilutes, harps, virginals, spinets, etc.; the second comprises instruments still in use such as violins, ’cellos, etc. The ornamental, strange and obsolete instruments are the ones that fakers chiefly furnish to the ordinary trade.

Naturally the trade in imitating instruments for the mere curio hunter and non-musical collector, is not so remunerative as other branches of the shady art of faking. The number of collectors in this branch is comparatively restricted, many of them talented and not easily duped as is the case in all branches not enjoying popularity. The tourist would rather go home with a painting or faked bronze of Naples or elsewhere, than carry an instrument he cannot play, which will probably be an encumbrance and dust-catcher in the small rooms of big cities. On the other hand, however, there is nothing complicated about this branch of faking. It is usually an easy matter for a guitar or mandoline maker to invest in the small amount of material needed, and to turn his hand to the work. It must also be taken into account that these workers are very often repairers of ancient instruments whereby they learn to make their imitations technically correct, though this is by no means always the case. We have, indeed, seen appalling exceptions, pianos of an early period transformed into spinets, lutes with grotesque and impossible finger-boards, etc. Some careless and certainly unmusical imitators go so far as to make instruments that could never be played, and even put common wire instead of gut strings, which makes one wonder what kind of collector it can be who delights in such delusions.

Our intention is to deal only with the artistic side of musical instruments, so we lay no claim to real connoisseurship of musical instruments, more especially as regards the family of stringed instruments which finds its best and most complete expression in the violin. Yet the fact that the great discoveries have generally been made by ignorant men like Tarisio, not necessarily fine musicians, goes to show that connoisseurship of form has its importance, greatly resembling after all, the connoisseurship of other branches in its summing up of various analyses into a final synthesis of form and character. True, in a good violin there is rarely any ornamentation, or if there is, it still more rarely furnishes a clue; but although all is entrusted to simplicity of line and form in its most aristocratic and elemental expression, there still seems to be enough to tell of the “touch of a vanished hand.”

“How interesting,” justly remarks Olga Racster, “it is to observe an expert spelling out the name of an old fiddle by the aid of this ‘touch of a vanished hand.’ How eagerly he seeks it and finds it with the help of that alphabet which lies concealed in the colour, shape, height and curves of an old violin.” Together with the difficulty of faking instruments the synthesis of connoisseurship in this line could not be better expressed. As for the quality of the tone, the expert relies purely and simply upon his ear, no book or hints of a practical character can assist the expert to perfect his ear. All depends upon natural disposition and the experience of a well-trained organ in this most important part of connoisseurship of musical instruments.

When Rossini was asked what is required to make a good singer, he said: “Three things, voice, voice, voice.” The quotation fits here for the chief requirement of a good connoisseur of musical instruments as regards their musical quality consists of a triply good ear.