How a Sneaky Furniture Expert Ripped Off the Rich and Tricked Versailles
vanityfair.com
vanityfair.com
I'd point people to another great Vanity Fair article about wine fraud:
A Vintage Crime https://www.vanityfair.com/culture/2012/07/wine-fraud-rudy-k...
“I often use the same people on restorations, and I’m intimate with their strengths and weaknesses,”
Hooreman says. He knew that one of them, for example, was fond of painting a coat of melted-down licorice on the surface of reproductions, to make new wood look old and dirty.
In 2012, Hooreman saw a pair of ployants—folding benches—that were for sale in the Aaron gallery showroom and were billed as the onetime property of Princess Louise Élisabeth, the eldest daughter of King Louis XV, and acted on a hunch.
“I licked the chair and voilà,” he says. “I could taste the fraud.”
That's dedication. I don't even want to imagine the years of dirt and cruft he'd be licking if the chair was authentic.
Orson Welles’ F is for Fake is essential viewing if you’re interested in forgery.
Although, Elmyr has a little more of a superhero-esque aura around his forgeries than this guy.
I suppose the forgeries could be constructed using extremely old wood, but even then, the glue or other parts would have to be relatively modern, and would provide a contrasting age.
Glue is useful - an older chair would have used hide glue, made from real animals. If a modern, non-hide glue was used that's an immediate giveaway. However, modern furniture builders still use it quite a lot in high end work today
La Marseillaise is 'the national identity' more than Versailles.
I am a French republican at heart, proud of my country, and see our history as a complicated layer of events which all brought something in. As much Versailles as the Revolution, as the years of Christianity and the sweet laicity we have today.