FAKED ANTIQUES

Greymouth Evening Star, 6 December 1928, Page 10

FAKED ANTIQUES

FURNITUREFOR AMERICA. To meet the demand for old furniture, in England, “antique” manufacturers are combing the country-side for weather-beaten wood from barns, sheds, old buildings, hulks and ancient battleships. Faked Jacobean, Tudor and Elizabethan furniture is then made by the ton, and sold in scores of “antique” shops that have sprung up, mainly to satisfy the craze of American tourists. That aspect of the furnishing trade was the one which most impressed Mr Geoffrey Johnson, an Australian furniture manufacturer, on his business trip to England, says the Melbourne “Herald.” So skilled, he said, were the workmen employed in faking antique furniture, that only the most experienced buyers could detect the fraud. All the pieces were made by hand, the workmen even using tools similar to those used by the carpenters who made the real antique furniture centuries ago.