A Dozen Ways to Spot Fake Antique Furniture

1. Be cautious if something is very cheap for what it is supposed to be. Don't assume the dealer has made a mistake. Sometimes a fake will not be extremely cheap, for example, something that, if genuine, would sell for £1000 might be on sale at £600 - still quite a lot of money. In these cases look very carefully at the item and assure yourself it is what it purports to be.

2. At antiques fairs, look around and if there are numerous examples of one kind of item, be suspicious. As an example, I went to a well-known trade fair a few years ago and every other stall had an art deco statue of a girl. Later I read a warning in the trade press that modern copies of these were being imported into the country and to treat any example with caution.

3. When buying furniture, stand back and look at the whole piece. Does it look right? Are the legs in the same style as the top or are they more or less elegant than the rest? Could it be a marriage, two separate pieces of furniture put together to make one. This is particularly common with dressers. An ordinary kitchen cabinet has a set of shelves added above to make a dresser which is more valuable than the two separate pieces of furniture.

4. Look at the marks of wear on furniture. Are they where you might expect to find them? Are they around drawer or door handles, along the edge where arms and hands would have rubbed over the years? Or is the wear uniform across a piece of furniture? Worse still, is it in places that are difficult to touch continuously whilst using the furniture? If the pattern of wear appears inconsistent with the way the piece would have been used, be cautious.

5. Similarly with dirt and grime - is it where it should be. Again, if it is uniformly dirty, why? One expects dust and dirt to accumulate in inaccessible corners or on the tops of carved feet.

6. The underside or back of furniture can tell a story too. Is it varnished, stained or painted, or does it have traces that it has been? This is a bad sign because there is no practical reason why areas that are not meant to be seen should be finished with varnish, stain or paint.

7. You might think that woodworm holes are a good sign of age. Unfortunately that is not necessarily so. They could have been put in the piece with a spike. The best way to tell is look at them though a magnifying glass and see if there are tiny cracks coming from the hole - woodworm don't do that.

8. Is a circular table still a perfect circle or a square one still a perfect square? Wood shrinks along the grain so there should be some sign of shrinkage meaning they are no longer the perfect shapes they were one hundred or more years ago.

9. Look at pegged joints, do the pegs protrude or are they still flush with the surface? In a genuinely old piece they should stand proud, if only slightly, as the surrounding wood has shrunk.

10. Look carefully at anything that is described as antique pine. A lot of supposedly antique pine furniture has been made up from old floorboards or paneling so the wood is antique, the piece of furniture is not. This can apply to other types of wood too. Some years ago, a well-known and influential dealer, for reasons beyond his control, sold his entire business with most of the stock of his shop and workshop being auctioned. There were raised eyebrows at the huge amount of old wood that he had stored in the workshop which was used, it was said, for restoration.

11. Look at dovetail joints on any furniture that is earlier than the mid 19th century. If they are uniform, beware, they could have been cut with modern machinery rather than by hand.

12. Look at the veneers on furniture dating from the early 19th century and earlier. Because they were cut by hand at that time they are thicker than machine cut veneers and can be up to 1/4 inch thick.

This might all sound very daunting. However, not all antiques dealers are rogues, most care deeply about the things they sell and hate the people who sell fakes. Always go to a reputable dealer and always get a proper receipt which describes in detail, including its date, the piece you are buying. Before spending large sums of money, go to historic houses, museums, the best quality fairs and look carefully at antiques on display. Get a feeling for the right style for a particular period and get to know the signs of that style. Above everything, beware of the bargain - if it looks too good to be true, it almost certainly is, at least until you are an expert.

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Copyright © 2001 by Carol Fisher