| Historically inaccurate construction methods The original rear legs on this chair were probably extensions of the back posts like those on the authentic Boston easy chair. There is no way these spliced joints could be interpreted as original construction, even though the Stones received assurances that there were no major replacements or restorations on the chair. |
| Colored or chemically altered surfaces The faker stained the quarter-round tenons, which connect the legs to the front seat rail, in an effort to make them look old. But their color and character differ significantly from those on period examples like the Boston easy chair to the left. |
| Easy chair Boston, Massachusetts, 1745-1765 Walnut, maple, white pine, and birch Purchase, President’s Special Fund M1979.45 |
| Easy chair American, c. 1955 Mahogany, maple, and pine Lent by the Chipstone Foundation 1955.14 Fakers often re-use parts from period objects to expedite and simplify their work. The individual who produced this fraudulent easy chair on the right married the frame of a mid eighteenth-century Massachusetts easy chair with fake legs and stretchers of the sort found on Newport, Rhode Island furniture. Another common faking strategy is to incorporate details from well known or widely published American furniture forms. At first glance, the fake Newport easy chair appears to be related to a Rhode Island high chest in the Yale University Art Gallery, illustrated above. Both pieces have knees carved with the same design, and claw-and-ball feet with exaggerated knuckles and long talons. The Stones would have recognized these features because the Yale high chest was pictured in Ralph Carpenter’s Arts and Crafts of Newport a year before they were offered the chair. The individual who sold the Stones this chair knew that they were avid collectors and students of Rhode Island furniture and close personal friends of Mr. Carpenter. |
| Wall Graphic: Title page from Ralph Carpenter, The Arts and Crafts of Newport, Rhode Island, 1640-1820 (Newport, RI.: Preservation Society of Newport, 1954). Wall Graphic: Detail of the leg of the high chest illustrated in Ralph Carpenter’s, The Arts and Crafts of Newport. Photo, courtesy of the Yale University Art Gallery, Mabel Brady Garvan Collection. |
| Wall Graphic: Title page from Ralph Carpenter, The Arts and Crafts of Newport, Rhode Island, 1640-1820 (Newport, RI.: Preservation Society of Newport, 1954). Wall Graphic: Detail of the leg of the high chest illustrated in Ralph Carpenter’s, The Arts and Crafts of Newport. Photo, courtesy of the Yale University Art Gallery, Mabel Brady Garvan Collection. |
Wall graphic:
Wall graphic: Illustration of the Gratz high chest in Joseph Downs, American Furniture: queen Anne and Chippendale Periods in the Henry Francis du Pont Winterthur Museum (New York: MacMillan Co., 1952), no. 198.
Wall Graphic: Illustration of the Gratz dressing table in Joseph Downs, American Furniture: Queen Anne and Chippendale Period in the Henry Francis Du Pont Winterthur Museum (New York: MacMillan Co., 1952), no. 333.