Fakes

Card Table
Newport, Rhode Island, 1760-1770
Mahogany, maple, and white pine
Lent by the Chipstone Foundation 1970.15

Card Table
American, c. 1959
Mahogany and white pine
Lent by theChipstone Foundation 1959.19

The faker who produced this card table based his design on a New England example illustrated the catalogue of the highly influential Girl Scout Loan Exhibition of 1929. Virtually the entire table is new with the exception of the white pine rear rail and fly rail. These were reused fom an eighteenth- or early nineteenth-centruy card table, a technique meant to deceive the buyer by presenting some authentic old surfaces.

Wrong tools, wrong techniques
Notice the deep rasp striations on the front and side rails. Authentic tables with shaped rails occasionally have file marks in similar contexts, but the striations are invariably finer, more intermittent, and concentrated in areas where the maker had to remove saw kerfs or undercut his work.

Incompatible surfaces and parts
The rails on this fake are stained, albeit unconvincingly, to blend in with the natural patination of the old rear rail and fly rail. The faker also used glue blocks to conceal incongruous surfaces and fresh saw cuts like those at each end of the shortened rear rail.

Contrived evidence of wear
The wear is inconsistent with normal use. For example, the undersides of the stretchers between the legs have the same dents, scuffs, and abrasion marks as the exposed surfaces. Moreover, the similarity of this damage suggests that it occurred at once rather than incrementally. Real antiques have worn surfaces that reflect different patterns of use over many years.

This is what the underside of a two-hundred year old table looks like. All of the components are the same color because they have been exposed to the same atmospheric conditions and light. The fine file marks on the undersides of the rail and knee blocks are typical of eighteenth-century Newport work.

Wall Graphic: Card table illustrated in the catalogue of the
Loan Exhibition of Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century Furniture
and Glass for the Benefit of the National Council of Girl Scouts
(New York: American Art Galleries, 1929), no.627.

Card table
Newport, Rhode Island, 1760-1770
Mahogany, maple, and white pine
Lent by the Chipstone Foundation 1970.15

This is what the underside of a two-hundred year old table looks like. All of the components
are the same color because they have been exposed to the same atmospheric conditions and
light. The fine file marks on the undersides of the rail and knee blocks are typical of
eighteenth-century Newport work.