FRAUDS IN OLD CHINA 
By Reginald Jones 
O UITE recently, while investigating the extent 
to which spurious china is being fabricated 
for the American market, I got word that a man 
traveling for an English firm dealing in “old china,” 
was in town. 
Securing an introduction, I called at his hotel 
and was shown into his room. Tables, bureau and 
mantel—even the fireplace—every bit of available 
space was covered with Toby mugs, Liverpool 
jugs, Lowestoft snuff' boxes, Staffordshire figures, 
Chelsea figures, old Bow figures. 
Syntax plates. Colonial cups 
and saucers, Wedgwood vases, 
Napoleon statuettes. Mason 
jugs. Colonial mirrors, Geor¬ 
gian goblets and wineglasses, 
square Dutch bottles, silver 
lustre tea sets; everything 
which commonly passes under 
the name of Americana, and 
much else besides, probably 
150 pieces in all. Each and 
every one of them looking as 
if they had come out of a cen¬ 
tury old corner cupboard for a 
spring cleaning. Yet each 
was a fraud, a delusion, and a 
cheat; made with the deliberate 
purpose of swindling people. 
At the first glance they looked 
genuine enough, particularly 
some imitations of Liverpool 
jugs; but after handling them 
and giving them a closer exam¬ 
ination it was fairly easy, in 
the majority of cases, to detect 
the fraud. 
The decoration on the Wedg¬ 
wood vases was of a heavy 
opaque white, moulded in one 
piece with the body, not laid 
on afterwards, over tbe color, 
as in genuine pieces, and the outlines were coarse and 
clumsy. The Syntax plates were not nearly deep 
enough in color, and altogether too new looking to 
deceive any but a tyro. The glass in the Dutch bot¬ 
tles was tbin and not cut, the gilt poor in quality 
and obviously new. The best imitations were those 
of the Liverpool jugs, the crackled appearance of 
the glaze was well done and the pictures true to the 
originals, but the dirt marks and inside stains, 
intended to give the appearance of age, were over¬ 
done, and the black line decoration was dull instead 
of having the genuine old lustre finish. Next to 
them, in workmanship, came the Walton Stafford¬ 
shire figures, but on these the painting was as 
a rule more crude than in the originals and the 
festoons of the flowers round the bases were poorly 
executed. To be deceived by such stuff one would 
have to be either very careless or very inexperienced. 
I speak plainly about tbe intention to deceive, 
because honest reproductions are not made by the 
gross and covered with stains, and worn down 
with sandpaper to suggest age 
and frequent use. Besides 
which, the man was perfectly 
frank about the use to which 
they were to be put. “You 
see,” he said, “there’s nothing 
in selling genuine antiques, it 
takes too much time and run¬ 
ning around to get’em. Some 
of the small stores ’as ’em, but 
a man who pays big rent and 
does a big business ’asn’t the 
time to be running around. 
’Alf the people wouldn’t know 
the fake from the real if you 
showed it to ’em, so why should 
’e bother ’is ’ead ? I sell these 
things by the ’undreds. You’d 
be surprised to see the orders 
I took last week in New York, 
more than four times as much 
as I did a year ago. This 
business is growin’ all the 
time. ” 
Yet when I inquired the 
prices of these things I found 
they were by no means cheap. 
Landed in this country, duty 
paid, a large Liverpool jug 
footed up to close on $g. The 
little flimsy Dutch bottles 
a piece. Colonial mirrors ^8, 
Chelsea figures ^15, Syntax plates ^3.50 and so on; the 
price depending partly on the exclusiveness of the 
thing sold and partly on the workmanship. 
Lorewarned is forearmed, but what is a man 
with a taste for old china to do ? One way is to 
buy your experience, and that is what happens 
to us all sooner or later; the other way, and the 
cheaper in the long run, is to go to an honorable, 
trustworthy dealer. 
Tell me one, you say. 
An honorable dealer is told by the class of goods 
TOBY JUG MADE IN I906 FROM 
AN OLD MOULD 
196 
