Caveat Emptor

In the past month I have seen a rather nice renaissance table at 2 different shops. From across the room it looked great, but on closer inspection........

http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j285/zekenstein/IMG_1003.jpg

http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j285/zekenstein/IMG_1013.jpg

The first shop had it marked as a repro and the price was $700, not bad if you want the "look" and love new furniture. The second shop had it marked as original and it was priced at $4200.00. The second one (pictured) was artificially stressed and looked like it was an old refinished table to some degree. I would bet that anyone reading this here would know it's a repro on close inspection, but still it could look pretty good to the uninitiated. The bronze plaques on it are stamped thin brass held on by wire brads and the proportions are all wrong for beginners, the more you look at it the more the fakeness comes to realization to the educated eye. These tables look very suspiciously like the Eastlake table John posted on Feb 6 2008 "How original do you want it". I hesitate, but they may be attributable to the same maker!

I feel like most dealers are reputable and the person selling this as an original may indeed believe it is in fact an original, but there are nefarious people out there so "Buyer beware"

Zeke

Zeke:

Thanks for the heads-up on this one.  It looks like a really nice table in the photos. 

Perhaps there is a need for a "sneaky reproduction library" here on the forum.  I mean, most repros are easy enough to spot and need no listing in a library, but there are clearly a few that are making the rounds that do not look like rough-carved teak from Indonesia which might fool the moderately-trained eye.

- Jason

Hey Jason,

Thanks for posting! :)

Here is a pic of the plaque which is identical on all 4 sides of the table, it's the most obvious give away that this is a repro:

http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j285/zekenstein/IMG_1011.jpg

I have no idea where these are made but they are doing a good job. This table listed on ebay with a small picture would bring bids for sure, heck I would maybe bid on it myself!

"Education builds the foundation, but self education erects the building" *

* The mothers creed

Thanks Zeke.  Would have loved to see the underside of that table.  That would have told the full story.  You may be right about the table in my previous post as being new as opposed to being redone.  It's certainly hard to tell anything from a picture and nothing substitutes for a first-hand look. 

If you end up going back to the shop at some point where they knew it was a repro, can you ask where these are coming from?  Company, country. etc.?

Hey John,

I did look at the underside of the table and I would have loved to photgraph it but the people in the shop were getting kind of nervous about me taking all these pictures. The undersurface did NOT look like new wood but it looked artificially fumed. The shop where they had this table selling as a repro is in Hackettstown NJ and I dont go there often. There are about 4 shops and very little to offer by way of good furniture. If I stop there and the shop still has it I will by all means ask and take pics of the underside.

By the way, I am enjoying this website so very much.. great work!

good discussion.....this sort of thing has been going on in early american furniture for nearly 100 years. indeed, wallace nutting, an icon in E/A furniture, started a repro furniture business in the first quarter of the 20th century and attached a PAPER label to the pieces. the repro's were so good that some began removing the paper label, distressing the piece and selling it as period E/A. this infuriated nutting to the point that he stopped using the paper label and began "branding" his furniture. in the 1970s, some people began the disgraceful practice of stripping paint decorated 19th century pieces in an attempt to sell as E/A. this caused john t. kirk , a founding father of the "GRUNGE" movement in american furniture to write a book with a chapter titled " BUY IT RATTY AND LEAVE IT ALONE" which caused a whole series of events, some good, some bad that continue to this day. i guess one could be flattered that american victorian furniture has reached a point where fakers and fraudsters consider it valuable enough to expend great effort to deceive the public. in a follow up article in 2000, mr kirk discusses what became of a movement he inadvertantly started......http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G1-66217947.html

Did anyone notice this original table which sold at Fontaines yesterday?  It went for $3000 and appears to be the design that the copy is based on.  Some of the ebonizing and gilding are in different places and the marquetry top is not the same at all.  The repro's bronze plaques are obvious as they have no patina but I wonder what the various woods, marquetry work, gilding and construction look like in person.  I have to admit I would probably buy the copy for $700.  I'd feel a little guilty but last year I went from 1400 to over 4000 square feet of living space and acquiring originals will be a long term process.  I've never worried about copies of american renaissance revival and aesthetic furniture as the few pieces I've seen have been such poor imitations but this posting shows the future of buying based on pictures will become more difficult.  Here's the link to the Fontaines listing:  http://cgi.liveauctions.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=28211&item=230222372888

Zeke, what are your favorite shops for Victorian furniture in NJ?  I'm near Philadelphia but haven't really ventured to NJ.

Thanks,
John

Hey JRE

That is scary! The Fontaines table is almost identical. I'm sure it would be real too as John Fontaine is not only one of the most honest people in the business, but I would stake money on his expertise as well. I very much doubt that a repro would get past him and his table looks absolutely genuine from the pictures. The resemblance to that repro is uncanny though.

John,

I wish I could tell you specific shops in New Jersey, but I know of none that specialize in high end victorian. I find stuff but it's mostly by chance and going to shops often looking for something that is freshly brought in. I actually look and buy more in your neck of the woods, Lambertville NJ has its occasional find and I go the antiques market almost every 2 weeks. I find good stuff in Adamstown of course and I would say Stouts is our favorite place. I go to Fontaines every now and then and have bought several pieces from John. The rest I rely on local auctions to turn up the occasional piece. Quite frankly, being in the medium budget range, we have to rely on legwork and searching a lot, but it's so darn much fun!

Now 20 years ago, ahhh it was a little different, but so many shops have closed. It's much harder now to keep an antique shop open and NJ has high rents. Lise used to live in the next town over from us and we bought several pieces from her. What a wonderful warm and honest person Lise is and someone who has been such a great pleasure both to deal with and call a freind.

I own several pieces I have bought from doug shmidt antiques in NE PA. Doug sells mostly oak but some walnut and he does the best refinishing I have ever seen. He's an absolute gentleman and a pleasure to do business with.

this thread is leading to an undeniable fact IMO, its nearly impossible to authenticate furniture through WEB pic's alone. its my understanding that in much of europe & japan, WEB pic's are so good and of such high quality that doctors are diagnosing disease in patients thru WEB pic's. if true i am JEALOUS AS HELL.

I feel compelled to weigh in on this issue with one of my more recent furniture faux pas.  We purchased a table last summer that was advertised as a restored Thomas Brooks library table using eBay liveauction.  My wife had reservations about the piece prior to the auction, but I sort of turned a blind eye to some elements that were not quite right proportionally.  As it turned out we won the bid and then had it shipped to our home in North Carolina.  Once we received it, it was glaringly obvious that the piece was a marriage with the bulk of that union being late 20th century.  I estimate that maybe 25% of the table base was Victorian, and the top was entirely from a recent table.  It was highly unlikely that any of it had ever been in the shop of Thomas Brooks.  The table in its current incarnation is a product of a well known dealer in Beverly Hills, CA who has a reputation for over-restoring otherwise desirable pieces.  As a side note in reference to an earlier post, he does in fact use a lot of sprayed paint (not shellac, varnish, etc.) in his finishing techniques, as that is the way in which this table was finished.  There are currently other tables on his website that are very close in construction to this one, and I believe share the same fate.  I understand that he had sold it earlier as an original to some poor soul for around $8K, and that individual then consigned it to the auction in Ohio where it went for much less.

Once my wife and I discovered the true identity of what we had purchased, we contacted the auction house with our findings and they were gracious enough to take the table back and refund our bid, however we had to pay shipping both ways from Ohio which was a significant amount of money.  The bottom line is if you are going to buy at auction with your decision base solely on a couple of photographs as most of us do, be prepared for the unexpected.

I am attaching a couple of photos of the table in question.  If you look at the underside shot, you will notice that the level of oxidation is no where near what it should be if it were in fact genuine.  I would guess the bulk of the table is no more than 10 or 15 years old.

Thanks,

Michael

Sad story Michael, I sympathise with you. The shipping is a major issue and of course nobody likes being burned!

Here is another one, this one is being sold as a repro by a reputable dealer but a shady person may just try and pass it off as a nice original. Notice the P&S like trim around the top.

http://www.tiptopwebsite.com/photos3/palmgar/renaissancerevival.JPG

There is nothing inherently wrong with making repros. Colonial revival has been around forever and how many bonnet top highboys have been reproduced? Magnolia hall has been making rococo victorian stuff since the 60s and so on. These "repros" allow a person to have the look without the expense of an original and thats a good thing. It seems that only recently has there been repros of high victorian furniture like this stuff and with the advent of electronic auctions, the buyer has to exorcise a little more caution. I'm sure most of us would be able to detect a "Fake" in person but the little ebay pics can look very convincing.

Again, a very sad story Michael, and this is why I brought this whole subject up in my post. As lovers of fine and beautiful things, it's just vulgar that some people would want to fool you for a small profit.