Sale-rooms
The fun of faking
Alistair McAlpine
Christie's last year produced a pile of catalogues 21 feet high, Sotheby's, one 20 feet high; Phillips and Bonhams, a formid- able stack; not to mention the publications of Seminsato in Milan, Hapsburg and Feldman in Geneva and Druot, the largest of the French auction houses. I cannot reconcile this with the habitual grumbling of antique and picture dealers that it is almost impossible to find stock. Never before has there been such an active market, with so many goods coming and going — amongst them a proportion of masterpieces and, once again, a proportion of objects that are, frankly, fakes. One of the most interesting catalogues published this season by Sotheby's is of fakes — fakes not for sale, but for exhibition at the recent Olympia Antiques Fair.
There are many motives for making a fake, and the least of these is pecuniary. Half the point of faking is the fun. In the Black Museum at Scotland Yard there is a £5 note, forged in the days when a fiver was white and the size of a pocket handker- chief. The forger drew every note himself and each one took him a week. Even at that time a man of his skill could have earned ten times as much in a legitimate occupation. The most entertaining exhibit in the Sotheby's exhibition is what pre- tends to be a bottle of Croft's 1924 Port. For all the world it appears to be the real thing and I suppose might still be lying in some wine speculator's store if it had not exploded in Sotheby's tasting room.
The greatest of the fakers enjoy their work in a way unequalled in any other trade by pitting their wits against the experts. Like gunfighters, they try to shoot the museum directors down. One eminent member of that fraternity (museum direc- tors, not fakers) told me that he hardly dared buy anything these days for fear that it was a fake offered to him just to see if he could tell. He has a nightmare of rows of fakers watching him as he examines an object — luckily he always wakes before coming to a decision There is, I am told by the people who work in museums, a way of dealing with this problem. When presented, for inst- ance, with an object outside their field of competence, they will greet it with the remark, 'Gosh, that's jolly nice', which puts the owner in a good mood. Next, 'It's jolly interesting', but under no circumst- ances will they say, 'It's jolly interesting for its period' because the owner might then ask what period. If the owner persists, they say, 'Quite remarkable, I have never seen anything quite like it.' Usually, the owner leaves clutching the object as if it were a tablet that Moses had dropped on the way down from Mount Sinai. The problem is that the experts in museums know a formidable amount about a very specific area and period. If you take your object to the wrong department, or the wrong per- son, you will likely get the wrong answer.
There is yet another kind of fake — the accidental fake. Many years ago in the rather tatty premises of a restaurant called Seigi's (it is now called Mark's Club and is rather smart), there stood a bronze horse painted white. A young dealer, then re- cently set up in business, persuaded Seigi, the proprietor, to sell it to him for £50. He cleaned off the white paint and resold it almost at once for £250. Returning to the restaurant, he found they had the horse's pair: he bought that for £50 and sold it for £500. Asking if there were any more, he discovered two, both white — £50 each, sold for £1,500. He quickly returned again, to be told, 'Hang about, I can't paint these bronzes as quickly as you need them.' Seigi was buying them brand new for £14 each from a shop in Westbourne Grove.
Most fakes are so obvious that even an inexperienced eye can tell. Mr Adnan Kashoggi is reputed to have a house full of pictures so evidently fake that perhaps it would be better to call them reproductions. With the best fakes a range of scientific tests is, there to expose them. But some- times the skill of the faker is beyond scientific detection and then the experts are left only with what they call 'feel'. I have never been able to reconcile the absolute certainty of the speculator in pursuit of a bargain with the doubt of the An Englishman's home is his carton.' expert in pursuit of scholarship. But then, I suppose this is indicative of their very different characters and trades.
Alistair McAlpine's sale-room column will appear monthly in The Spectator.
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