LIGHT FURNISHINGS.

Auckland Star, Volume 55, Issue 152, 28 June 1924, Page 24

LIGHT FURNISHINGS.

A CROP OF AMUSING STORIES. No, this article has nothing whatever to do with chairs and tables and things that arc so light that a little child can tote them to the top door. Our only excuse for this sort of thing is that our Christinas number pencxally marks a departure from our sedate deportment as a technical journal says "The Cabinet Maker" in its Christmas number. Warranted Genuine. The appearance of Quinneva some years ago first as a novel, then as a play, started the fashion for inventing tall stories about furnishing, especially antique furnishing. Some of them are amusing, but the one we have always liked best is concerned with a young, nervous and ill-informed salesman, who started work as a junior with an antique dealer, and losing his head with his first customer solemnly sold to a trusting citizen of the United States a lacquer cabinet, as warranted genuine, and made in England 10SS A.D. When his employer heard about the transaction he congratulated the youth, until further details of the sale were forthcoming, and then he discovered that the salesman had given the stock number on the cabinet's label as the date, the cryptic initials A.D. standing \n tlie dealer's marking system for antique, judiciously qualified by the adjective "doubtful." Also there is another story of what nervousness can do to a young salesman ; the subject of this anecdote had just sold an enormous, architectural bookcase, really a vast structure of mahogany. H was the event of his career; quite carried away he beamed upon his client, a dear old lady, and said: "May I send it for you?" The Expert Undeceived. Then there is the drama that could well enjoy the title of "The Expert Undeceived," or (to be topical and inane) "Yes, we have nothing genuine to-day." This is really a sad story with a moral, but as it's Christmas time we won't bother about the moral; without it the tale is distinctly fresher. There was once a collector and a great expert on old furniture, and in jjon'iinp affection for his beautiful tilings and hia fellow men he felt tliat (he enjoyment of so rnupi- bounty nlono >v:ii in the nature of selfishness, so he arranged for his friends to share his c Miction, I y the simiile but jirai'l'cnl uwt-sn of iw ing copies made of hie choicest and rar at ih'nge :ind felling them as reproduction*, lie tninj.l a cibin t-_ maker s; e.-ially to this work, and when-" ever he irade a find he would call in his ]:et craftsman, obtain a price for a copy, and then seek a buyer for that same. It chanced that he acquired at a sale for a long sum a veritable gem of antique craftsmanship. It cost him £500 odd, but he felt it was worth it. It was Chippendale at his most complicated; an exposition of the master's genius in his ultra-Chinese mood; ornate and enormous it would seem to the vulgar minds of the unfortunate people who were not frightfully keen on antiques that Chippendale had b*en dabbling not only in Chinese art when he produced it, but possibly Chinese vice—opium smoking, for instance. But to the collector it"»was a masterpiece, j He had it sent home—he called his private museum a home, by the way —and admired it with unction. Then he sent for his tame cabinet maker and asked for an estimate for a copy of this work of art. The cabinet maker did not give the piece more than I a glance. He named his price, and j what he said was "Ninety-live quid, Guvnor." j The expert reeled with the shock, but in fairness to the man he suggested that some mistake must have occcurred. "How do you know/ lie said, ''that it will cost ninety-live pounds—you can't give a price like that, you always go into other estimates for my work?" J "Don't need to here," came the reply: "I made that cabinet a year ago for ninety-five quid for a friend of yours, I bo I ought to know." 1