FRAUDS AND FORGERIES

OWING to the important position that jewellery occupies in the domain of virtu, it is natural that it should receive particular attention at the hands of the fraudulent. On the question of frauds of jewellery we have to distinguish between forgeries—articles professing to be genuine ancient works of art—and counterfeits—imitations of real objects. Long before the forger, as we define him, set to work on the field of jewellery, there existed the business of the imitator of precious stones and precious metals—one of counterfeit rather than of forgery.

The production of false gems dates from the time that precious stones first came to be generally worn as personal ornaments. The manufacture of imitations, intended in many cases to pass as real stones, was an important branch of the art of the famous glassworkers of antiquity. These glass gems, or pastes as they are termed, were largely set in rings to meet the tastes of the poorer classes; and are referred to by Pliny as the "glass gems from the rings of the multitude." Would-be smart individuals, also, are frequently satirised by Martial for wearing in their rings glass pastes which they attempted to pass off as real stones. At the same time coloured foils were placed as the backing to transparent stones, and were employed to give a full hue to inferior-coloured stones.

Besides being employed for jewellery, precious stones were made use of by the mediÆval embroiderers to increase the effect of the coloured materials and gold thread in the decoration of their robes. But when we bear in mind the accurate descriptions given by Theophilus in his Diversarum Artium Schedula of the process of making false gems, it is only reasonable to assume that many of the so-called jewels were not in fact real gems, but imitations. Certain it is that in mediÆval times the counterfeiting of precious stones was very largely carried on, while many accounts are preserved in early records of fines and other punishments inflicted on dishonest traders in gems who attempted to dispose of spurious stones, usually set in finger rings. In England and France during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries it was customary for the jewellers' guild of each town to have a rule prohibiting its members from setting paste gems in real gold or real gems in plated metal; from mounting Scottish pearls with those of the East; or mingling coloured glass, or false, with precious stones. As in earlier periods, a crystal or a colourless paste was made to imitate a coloured stone by backing it with a foil. At South Kensington an example exists, set in a gold ring of sixteenth-century German work (No. 1206-'03), of a white crystal, which is cut en cabochon and backed with a red foil, and bears a striking resemblance to a carbuncle (Pl. XXIII, 17).

Many books on precious stones, both old and new, give receipts for the manufacture of imitation gems, made of flint glass and coloured with oxides according to the originals they are intended to counterfeit. Apart from these are false gems produced with really fraudulent intent. Since imitation stones cannot resist the file, it is the practice, besides backing a crystal with coloured foil, to back a thin layer of genuine stone—intended to resist the test when examined for hardness—with a layer of glass coloured as required. Another process of fabrication consists of placing a layer of glass between two layers of true stone. The place of the join in the "triplet" is hidden by the collet of the setting, and the deceit can only be detected by unsetting the stone and soaking it in chloroform. Another means employed for changing and improving the colours of stones is by heat, for the colour of nearly all gems is affected by heating.

Not pastes only but clear crystals have long been palmed off on the unwary for diamonds. Perhaps the best-known of these were crystals of quartz found in the Clifton limestone near Bristol, which went by the name of Bristol diamonds. They are alluded to as worn in the ears by the fop described in Lenton's Young Gallant's Whirligigg (1629). Quartz crystals found in the tin mines of Cornwall, and similar stones from the neighbourhood of Harrogate, still known respectively as Cornish and Harrogate diamonds, were also much employed for jewellery from the sixteenth century. Transparent stones from various parts of the Continent are given the names of the localities in which they are found. In France, rock crystal, cut in rose or brilliant form, went generally by the name of Pierre d' AlenÇon or Caillou du Rhin.

Of the transparent glass paste termed Stras or Strass we have already spoken. Though an imitation, the paste of eighteenth-century jewellery does not necessarily belong to the category of frauds and counterfeits, since it possesses a certain originality of its own, and does not appear to have been generally worn with intent to deceive. False or mock pearls on the other hand seem in some way to be rather more associated with deception, though they also can be made to serve for decorative purposes entirely apart from any such intent. To reproduce the lustre or "orient" characteristic of oriental pearls, use is made in the fabrication of imitations of a pearly essence known as essence d'orient, obtained from the silvery scales on the underside of a fish called the bleak. Beads of blown glass slightly opalescent and treated with acid to produce an iridescent surface are coated internally with a film of the essence, and wax is then introduced to give the bead the desired weight. Other mock pearls are made up of a vitreous composition formed largely of the pearl essence. Their surface when burnished presents a fine lustre. These are generally termed Venetian pearls. Roman pearls are formed of external coatings produced by frequent dippings into a solution made of the pearliest parts of the oyster.

From earliest times frauds have been committed in connection with the precious metals. The goldsmiths and jewellers of the Middle Ages were forbidden to work in base metal, to use false stones of glass, or to put coloured foil beneath real stones. They were further expressly forbidden to manufacture personal ornaments for secular use of gilt or silvered copper or brass. Documents in the archives of the City of London contain many references to the perpetration of fraud in passing off as real, objects of brass or latten that had been silvered or gilded. In 1369 a conviction and punishment by the pillory took place for selling to "divers persons rings and fermails of latten, of coloured gold and silver, as being made of real gold and silver, in deceit, and to the grievous loss, of the common people"; and in 1376 a workman was imprisoned for having silvered 240 buttons of latten, and thirty-four latten rims for gipciÈres, and having "maliciously purposed and imagined to sell the same for pure silver, in deceit of the people." From actual objects that have survived it would seem that the more heinous offence was not infrequently committed of plating with silver the baser metals of tin, lead, and pewter. The statutes of the goldsmiths ordained that no jeweller should sell any article of silver unless it was as fine as sterling, "nor sett it to sell before it be touched" with the leopard's head and maker's mark. But exceptions were always made in favour of small articles of jewellery "which could not reasonably bear the same touch." Such materials as pinchbeck and Similor and the plated objects of modern times hardly fall within the present category.

Actual forgeries of personal ornaments can scarcely be said to have been committed until comparatively recent years—not, in fact, until the demand for specimens of old jewellery on the part of the antiquary and connoisseur rendered their reproduction profitable.[191]

Owing to the high prices they command from collectors, or to various facilities afforded for their production and disposal, three classes of objects—Greek and Etruscan jewellery, mediÆval rings, and enamelled pendants of the Renaissance—offer the strongest temptation to the forger; and he on his part displays such an amount of skill and ingenuity, that the fabrication of spurious antiquities of this kind may be said to have amounted almost to a fine art.

The much sought after gold jewellery of Greece and Etruria has received more attention than any other, partly on account of the fact that gold is subject to but slight oxidisation; for the patina of age is lacking even on ancient examples. Setting aside the beautiful imitations by such artists as Castellani, father and sons, and later by Melillo and Giuliano—which clever reproductions are known to have been sometimes foisted upon collectors by unscrupulous dealers—a great deal of really false work made with the intent of passing for old has been produced in Italy—chiefly at Rome, Naples, and Florence. On the subject of such pseudo-antiques Count Tyszkiewicz has several good stories to tell in his Memories of an Old Collector. Of all objects of this kind, that which has claimed the largest share of public attention is the notorious "Tiara of Saitapharnes," which deceived several well-known authorities, and reposed for several years as a genuine antique in the Louvre, until the revelation in 1903 of the person of its ingenious author—a Russian Jew of Odessa.

The disclosure of this remarkable fraud was the climax of a long series of forgeries of ancient Greek jewellery from Southern Russia, which, purporting to be recovered from the Greek tombs of Olbia and Kertch, long renowned for their wealth in such objects, were purchased by more than one well-known collector. So keenly has the forger pursued his evil course in this particular domain, that, apart from that preserved in museums and in the cabinets of collectors whose personal judgment is sound on such matters, M. Eudel goes so far as to say that the greater portion of the antique jewellery extant is of recent fabrication.

MediÆval ornaments of all sorts are forged at the present day upon the Continent to a considerable extent, though less than are those of later times. One important centre of their production is Paris. Another, in earlier years in particular, was Frankfort, where visitors to watering-places on the Rhine have long been the victims of fraudulent vendors. Such mediÆval objects, however well supported by a dealer's warranty of place and time of discovery, require, says Mr. King, to be examined by the amateur with a very suspicious and critical eye. Among other personal ornaments of this period that have received attention at the hands of the forger are the leaden badges known as pilgrims' signs. Many ingenious forgeries of the kind were produced about forty-five years ago, and purported to be brought to light by workmen engaged in excavations near the Thames in the City of London. These were in large part the work of two illiterate mud-rakers on the banks of the river; while articles of like kind were shortly afterwards made by two men known as "Billy and Charley," who manufactured a number of curious pendent medals of lead and "cock-metal."[192] The discovery in the Seine, about the same time, of many genuine pilgrims' signs led to the circulation also in France of a quantity of spurious objects of a similar nature.

Renaissance pendants, the prizes of the connoisseur, are favourite subjects for reproduction at the present day, for, unlike the earlier objects, they are not ill-adapted for personal use. Jewellery in the Cinquecento style has for several years past been made in large quantities at Vienna. These jewels are generally not in gold, like the works they profess to imitate, but in silver-gilt, and as a result their enamel is never of fine quality, their general appearance is not up to the standard of the old, and their workmanship is mostly very mechanical. Apart from these and similar works, made also in France and generally sold in jewellers' shops as modern productions, there are others which pretend to age. Though one seldom meets with examples that approach the best productions of the Renaissance, objects of the kind are occasionally imitated with such proficiency, that in collecting specimens of early jewellery in no instances is it necessary to exercise greater caution than in those of the Cinquecento.

Fine jewellery of the eighteenth century, now almost equally sought after—watches, chatelaines, rings, and brooches—has been multiplied in quantities during recent years. As the brooches of this date are very often mounted with rose-cut diamonds, care has been taken to employ stones cut in this manner. Their settings generally distinguish the copies. Again, as M. Eudel points out, when fine old diamond-work has been sent to be reset, the jeweller preserves the old mounts, sets them with modern stones or pastes, and sells them as genuine old work. For the purpose of furthering the deception complete parures purporting to be seventeenth or eighteenth century work are offered for sale in genuine old leather or shagreen cases. A set of jewels may even be made for the special purpose of fitting such a case, or an entirely new case constructed, and treated in such a manner as to give it an appearance of age.