PRESUMABLY, as long as there is a demand for old glass, there will be found persons sufficiently unscrupulous to attempt to eke out the very limited supply of the genuine article by imposing upon the credulity, or ignorance, of collectors, and supplying them, greatly to the vendor’s advantage, with more or less colourable imitations of what they desire.

I have in a previous chapter dealt with certain experiences of my own with regard to “Fiat” glasses. That, however, was only by the way. The subject of frauds and imitations in Old English glass is of quite sufficient importance to warrant a chapter to itself. There is, probably, no department of the “antiques” beloved of the collector in which there is so much room for fraud as in Old English glass, and there is certainly none in which imitation has been carried to a finer point.{167}

One can hardly blame the manufacturer for this. The demand for old glass is much larger than the supply, and the collector, who is desirous of nothing so much as to complete his “set,” is insistent in his inquiries. But the trouble comes when a reproduction, altogether admirable in itself, is passed off for the thing it is not—a genuine specimen of the early glass-worker’s art—bearing a value proportioned to its antiquity and presumed rarity.

I saw, not long ago, in a silversmith’s in the south of England, a great number of specimens set out for sale as genuine old glass, at a price corresponding to their supposed value, but every piece, without exception, belonged to what a connoisseur would term the “bad age,”. i.e. anything from the year 1850 onwards. The dealers must have known its period and its worth, or rather its worthlessness, and yet they allowed it to be sold as the real thing. Unfortunately, this is no uncommon occurrence, and it is a pity that the practice cannot be checked. The ordinary trader is not permitted to sell margarine as butter, or the publican manufactured spirit as pure grape brandy, but the dealer in antiques seems to claim a special licence to{168} impose upon the unwary, and may with impunity—or, at least, often does—pass off as rare specimens of ancient craftsman’s work things which to the seeing eye are obvious and clumsy frauds, and virtually worthless.

Nor is the large dealer the only culprit. Small second-hand shops teem with “faked” antiques, and many of these, and also certain pawnshops, make a great part of their profit out of the unwary and unskilled hunter for bargains in glass, china, engravings, sporting prints, and all the other objects that tempt a collector’s eye.

Fig. 14 illustrates a common type of such bargains. These pieces were procured at a pawnbroker’s establishment in South London. They are obviously imitations of Early Georgian salt-cellars, but they were offered to the author as “genuine old Waterford sweetmeat dishes,” and then as “perhaps salt-cellars,” and finally as “old glass ice-cups,” at a price dwindling from 31s. 6d., through 25s. to 15s., at which I purchased them as “awful examples” of the fate that awaits the collector who goes bargain-hunting in antiques with an enthusiasm greater than his knowledge.{169}

It is difficult to lay down any hard and fast rule by which to test the genuineness of specimens discovered in this haphazard way. Possibly the best is the colour “test.” Does it look right in colour?—not too green and not too steely, for crafty imitators often tend to overdo these qualities. Does it bear too evident signs of age? One has heard of chips and “hair” scratches artificially produced in order to give it that appearance of advanced age which is so grateful to the eye of the collector and the pocket of the vendor. Your best plan is not to jump at once but to take a piece of good glass with you by which to test the find and compare the two as to colour, sharpness of cutting and design, and so on. With caution you may expect now and again to pick up in this casual way some pieces worthy of your attention, and maybe once or twice a specimen worth its place in any collection. For good examples of glass and china have been known to be pawned for a fraction of their worth, neither the depositor nor the pawnbroker having the slightest inkling of their value. But the shops above all others to be shunned by the picker up of unconsidered trifles are the shops{170} whose windows scream, by the aid of plastered tickets, of the “special bargains” to be obtained within. The collector may well abandon hope who enters here; there is probably not a genuine piece in the place. If there is it occupies a prominent place as a decoy duck, and is generally marked at an absurdly low price, the salesman depending on his knowledge of human nature to foist off something else on the unwary or diffident customer. I have had, on occasion, an unholy joy in entering some such place and defeating all the efforts of the salesman to divert my attention, carrying off the only decent piece in the place at a price possibly fifty per cent. lower than its intrinsic value. But such pleasures are not for all nor, indeed, for many. In actual practice the would-be purchaser is generally told that that particular specimen is not for sale, that “a customer had left it to be valued,” “that it had been put in the window by mistake,” or some other cock-and-bull story.

Other places to be shunned are the sham Oriental bazaars where Eastern jewellery, Japanese ivories, jars, fans, beads, etc., are sold. Many such establishments cater expressly for{171} the unwary and unwise collector. He will find, if his hobby be glass, glass of all kinds and descriptions from Elizabethan downwards, and will be treated with such charming solicitude and deference that he may well become blinded to the fact that the whole stock is counterfeit, and that the whole atmosphere of the place is specially designed to conceal that awkward but essential fact. The cheat is assisted by the delightful courtesy of the saleswoman.

But apart from the scores of recognised ways in which this nefarious business of planting frauds on the innocent is carried on, there are many less obvious and consequently more dangerous traps for the unwary. Of these one only hears from the victims themselves. Thus one, attracted by a specimen in a shop window, may become an interested listener to a conversation in which the beauty of the said piece and its phenomenal cheapness are the theme. It probably never occurs to the dupe that the respectable-looking lady and gentleman are in the employ of the shopkeeper, and that their conversation was arranged entirely for his benefit.

Then comes the great question of sales, private or otherwise. There is the complete clearance{172} owing to the proprietor’s death. There is a window full of miscellaneous stock, including certain good pieces. There is also the notice, “Nothing sold until the 21st.” By the 21st the few good pieces, having achieved their object, have disappeared. But the crowd they have attracted is there, and is there with the intention of buying—and buys! Again, there is the family compelled by misfortune to realise immediately all its assets, and in so doing to sacrifice everything. Who would not pick up a bargain when to do so is to do a good turn?

All such methods are transparent enough if one stops to consider and to analyse. But how seldom one does!

A very fine and lucrative trade is carried on in Old Bristol and Nailsea glass, for the reason that in no other kind of glass is it so difficult to distinguish the false from the true. The milky white surface lends itself particularly to imitation. I remember some specimens brought to me by a well-known collector. They were a pair of small bottles, pepper and vinegar, and my visitor was mightily proud of his “find” and his bargain. But on a careful examination I fear that he realised, with some sense of discomfiture, that{173} the “deceased ancestor” who had been dangled before him was something of a myth, and that the specimens were only modern reproductions and probably foreign at that. To my surprise, on visiting a local museum on the West Coast recently, I found the same two pieces exhibited as specimens of early Bristol glass. The best test for this description of glass is carefully to scrutinise the decoration with a strong magnifying glass. The magnification will reveal alike the perfection of the workmanship of the real old Bristol manufacture and the poverty and roughness of the imitation. Further, Bristol glass is soft to the touch, with a beautiful smooth body. Often, too, on turning the glass upside down you find in the centre a clear spot devoid of the opal tint, probably due to the workman running all his colour off at this point. The “fake” will probably in addition to being rough in texture be light in weight and of a milk and watery hue, p............