House and Garden 
condition. I soon discovered that Fritz, the cabinet 
maker, was a jewel and the renovated antiques sold 
so readily that reinforcements of workmen became 
necessary. It was not long before the supply of time¬ 
worn trophies that I found in out-of-the-way places 
gave out completely and I then held a consultation 
with the trusty Fritz, which resulted in his turning 
out reproductions that 
were so admirable that I 
found no difficulty in 
disposing of them with 
as little trouble as I had 
the truly old ones. The 
gullibility of the average 
purchaser struck me as 
being rather astonish¬ 
ing for I had expected 
more or less trouble, but 
everything went swim¬ 
mingly and it was not 
long before I had a 
manufactory of an¬ 
tiques that turned out 
nearly everything for 
which there was any de¬ 
mand. 
As a rule purchasers 
of antiques who are not 
collectors say that they 
do not care so long as 
things look old, but se¬ 
cretly they pride them¬ 
selves upon their uner¬ 
ring judgment and they 
never seem to realize 
that there is a difference 
of about one-half in the 
price of an antique, or 
alleged antique, over 
an admitted repro¬ 
duction. Sentiment 
has of course much to 
do with it and the belief 
that antiques have 
once reposed under the 
roofs of Colonial man¬ 
sions has sold more than 
one freshly made imita¬ 
tion. I have heard people 
dreamily imagining 
powdered and brocaded dames sitting, in olden times, 
at mahogany desks that had really only received 
the finishing touches from the cabinet-maker two 
hours before. 
One day a man more or less well known as a col¬ 
lector of antiques came to my shop and purchased a 
great many pieces of mahogany and oak furniture. 
As he was a most desirable customer the things were 
shipped as soon as possible. In a few days the entire 
lot came back mangled almost beyond repair, for he 
had cut chunks out of every piece, exposing the green 
wood that lay under coats of clever staining. With 
the returned furniture came a request for the amount 
of the purchase to which I replied with alacrity. 
That, however, was my one accident of the kind and 
I have often wondered 
how his suspicions were 
aroused. After the inci¬ 
dent of the chopped 
furniture, I concluded 
that something must be 
done to prevent a recur¬ 
rence of such a humil¬ 
iating, if not to say dan¬ 
gerous experience. 
It is a well-known fact 
that partially successful 
attempts have been 
made to antique woods 
by burying them in the 
earth but all methods of 
the kind are very unsat¬ 
isfactory. Fritz, my 
chief fakir, hit upon a 
sure process in his many 
experiments and to-day 
it is impossible to tell by 
cutting whether the 
wood is old or not. 
Fritz came to me one 
day with two pieces of 
oak, one new and yellow 
the other as -old and 
gray as an ancient 
shingled barn. He had 
made an air-tight box 
and had simply put a 
dish of ammonia and 
sulphuric acid in the 
bottom. The f u m es 
had forced the antiqu¬ 
ing clear through the 
wood. The success of 
the experiment justified 
the building of a larger 
box so we constructed 
one large enough to 
hold entire pieces of fur¬ 
niture. A tray ran the length of the bottom and 
feed and drain pipes were placed at opposite ends. 
The front was hinged. We succeeded in making it air¬ 
tight and then gave it a test. In almost every instance 
the wood was antiqued all the way through after 
twenty-four hours, and a block of oak eight inches in 
thickness came out in forty-eight hours, as gray as 
a badger. Varnished woods were not noticeably 
MAHOGANY SF.CRETARY 
One of the most popular fakes known, as it is a copy 
of a secretary used by General Washington 
174 
