Would the camera capture agony or ecstasy on your face if you took that whatsit in the attic to that popular traveling appraisal TV show?
A few who have visited PBS’ Chubb’s Antiques Roadshow” (which airs occasionally on WTTW-Ch. 11) have had cause to beam, such as Claire Weigand-Beckmann, who learned at the Roadshow’s stop in New Jersey that the card table she bought for $25 at a tag sale was a labeled John Seymour piece made in Boston circa 1798. It later sold at auction for more than $500,000.
On the other hand, the vast majority of items brought to the Roadshow are not valuable, even if bought for considerable money, says Leigh Keno, New York dealer and member of the show’s impressive panel of specialists who give free appraisals.
On the recently aired show that was taped in Dallas, Keno had to tell Sue Vanderford of Irving, Texas, that the Windsor chair she had paid $460 for was a fake that someone had made look old by putting paint and talcum powder on it and setting it on fire to give it a crackled finish.
“Sort of a Windsor flambe,” he says.
But the great thing about disappointments like this one, Keno says, is the opportunity they provide to teach about detecting fakes and forgeries in the antiques market.
Edward Reily Collins, like Keno, takes great satisfaction in turning people into more savvy antiques-shoppers. English antiques, in Collins’ case.
“The fun of it is to try and give the layman a few little pointers so that they can go into an antique shop or auction and terrify the living daylights out of crooks,” says Collins, who will be speaking at the three-day Chicago International Antiques and Fine Art Fair, which makes its debut at The Merchandise Mart May 1. Through his hourlong talk “Fakes and Forgeries–Evaluating English Antiques,” he hopes to help even “the totally uninitiated” to spot the real from the rip-off, distinguish the exceptional from the ordinary and empower them to buy English furniture with confidence.
Collins, the managing director of Hallidays Antiques, a 50-year-old firm in Oxfordshire, England, can spot even a masterful fake from across a room–though it has taken him 30 years to develop that ability, he says.
It can get technical among experts, he says, but for the beginner, “it’s mostly a case of common sense.”
First, he says, knowing the order in which woods came into use is very valuable. Oak and pine came first, Collins says, followed by walnut, then mahogany and then exotic woods like satinwood.
Second, it helps to know history.
For example, knowing that artists accompanied Admiral Nelson to Egypt during the Battle of Trafalgar can help you identify pieces from the Regency period.
“Regency furniture from 1805 to 1820 has a tremendous amount of influence from these Egyptian campaigns,” says Collins, including lions’ paw feet, brass inlay and carved columns topped by sphinxes.
Play detective
A common way for buyers to get ripped off is when a lesser, though authentic, piece is presented as something more than it is, which Collins’ slide lecture also will address.
Collins, as a dealer, will bring to the show pieces from private English houses that have their own tales to tell.
One of them, “a very, very rare,” exquisite, oyster-veneered laburnum William and Mary chest, dated 1685, costs $50,000, a mid-range price for his firm.
“The laburnum tree has lovely yellow flowers, and it just makes these lovely `oysters’ when you cut it,” Collins says. “The whole chest is made up of dozens of these oyster veneers, all fitted together.”
This 36-inch-high chest has bun feet that look “like bread rolls,” Collins adds. “They’re not the original feet. All of them are replaced, and there’s a good reason why. These pieces sat on stone floors. People then were different: If they wanted to spit, they spat. People spilled wine on the floor. Dogs cocked their legs on the furniture. Houses were unsavory. The damp got into these pieces and they rotted quickly.
“It became the actual fashion from 1710 to 1715 to use a bracket foot, a more square foot, which made these furniture pieces more modern. They were all changed,” Collins says. “We put the bun feet back to make them more authentic.”
(Very few of the original feet survived; restoration that brings a piece back to its original design should not significantly devalue it, but dealers should be upfront about it, Collins says.)
A second piece Collins is bringing is a very similar chest of drawers in walnut veneer, from the same period within 10 years. Like the William and Mary chest, it also has bun feet–though much larger, flatter ones. Unlike the William and Mary chest, its price–$18,000–is much less.
Why the big value drop?
“The difference is, they only made one oyster laburnum to every 100 of the others,” Collins says. One had to be very wealthy to own one then, so they didn’t make a lot.
Collins, whose talk takes place at 11 a.m. May 2, is one of a British contingent of 14 antiques dealers, members of LAPADA, the United Kingdom’s association of professional art and antique dealers, who join an overall roster of 90 dealers from the U.S. and abroad in the Mart show. Nearly 20 of the dealers are from the Chicago area.
The fair, which will not be vetting pieces by committee, promises to be a “generalist” show with something for everybody, says Richard Norton of Richard Norton Inc. Norton, dean of Chicago’s antiques dealers, who will have a booth at the fair.
Among the offerings are American country and Arts and Crafts furniture, silver, ceramics, designer and estate jewelry, paintings, prints, posters, folk art, sculpture, Art Deco paintings and furniture, tribal art, garden furniture, decorative arts, textiles, clocks, barometers and glassware.
The fair is actually three shows in one, as it is combined with Prints Chicago ’98, whose 20 dealers usually get together in the fall, and the Chicago International Antiquarian Book Fair, a gathering of international dealers of rare books, maps, manuscripts and ephemera.
`INSIDE ANTIQUES’
Here are a few hot tips from antiques experts on how to know the good from the bad and the ugly:
-“Furniture crooks hit their fakes with a flail (or chains) from all angles, from top to bottom and left to right.” But a genuine article, such as a chest of drawers, would get scuff marks from top to bottom, with the biggest indentations at the top, says Edward Reily Collins of Hallidays Antiques, Oxfordshire, England.
-“Look for discolorations or darkening around the knobs, if you can envision where somebody’s hands have gone for 250 years. You can’t just dab on some dark colorthis has been penetrated into the wood. Sometimes this patination exists on the undersides of drawers in pieces without hardware,” says Barrie Heath of Caledonian, English furniture, in Northfield.
-“If the pattern has been cut off on a Lalique vase, it’s an indication the top has been chipped and ground down,” advises Richard Nelson, assistant vice president, furniture and decorations, at Sotheby’s Chicago. “On porcelains, look for `in-painting,’ where the original paint may have flaked off and been restored. If you hold the piece sideways, the reflection of the light is different (on the repainted areas.)”
-“Take a drawer out and flip it over. White pine will turn brown over time. In an authentic antique, it is just the outside surface that gets oxidized, and it will scratch white,” says Leigh Keno of Leigh Keno American Antiques in New York. “A piece of wood stained to simulate oxidation reacts differently when you scratch it. It reveals more stain.”
-“Authentic (Chinese) pieces are usually designed with expanding panels for dry and wet seasons. Even the chairs are made that way,” says Alan Palmer of Pagoda Red in Chicago.
THE FACTS
The Chicago International Antiques & Fine Art Fair
What: 90 dealers will offer a wide range of items from every period from the late 17th to the 20th Century. A good mix of American, English, Asian, Scandinavian and Latin American antiques will be presented.
When: May 1-3
Time: 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. May 1 and 2, noon to 5 p.m. May 3
Triple treat: Prints Chicago ’98 and The Chicago International Antiquarian Book Fair take place at the same time as the antiques fair
Where: All three shows will be on the 8th floor, The Merchandise Mart, World Trade Center, Franklin and Wells Streets
Cost: General admission (includes three shows) is $12 per person. Admission to the April 30 preview party, organized by the Women’s Board of the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago, is $85 to $250; call 312-908-2685
For show information, call: 800-677-6278
Speakers: May 1- William Adair, owner of Gold Leaf Studios in Washington, D.C., discusses “The Framer’s Art–Understanding Antique Frames” at 1 p.m.
May 2 – Edward Reily Collins, managing director of Hallidays Antiques in Oxfordshire, England, will lecture on “Fakes and Forgeries–Evaluating English Antiques” at 11 a.m.
May 2 – David C. Bishop, owner of David C. Bishop & Co. Inc., talks about “Bringing the Outside In–Conservatories and Garden Rooms” at 2 p.m.
Lecture admission: $15 each
