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Discover Mid-America — July 2007

‘Repro schizo’

Generally speaking, the antiques business has a schizophrenic attitude toward reproductions and their impact on the trade. And until the trade sorts out its own ambivalence, it can hardly expect the buying public to prefer genuine antiques.

In May 2007, some of the trade press reported on a crusade by antiques show manager Dody Fontinel to ban the sale of reproductions of American antiques. One journal covered her points solely by reprinting Fontinel's letter to Congressman John Warner, in which she advocates legislation to regulate the importation of foreign reproductions of American antiques.

However, as reported more comprehensively in another trade journal, Fontinel's campaign is far more directed at American dealers, whom she charges with disseminating repros throughout the antiques market. Indeed, the trade does seem to indulge a "wink-wink, nudge-nudge" attitude to reproductions — decrying them in the town square even as it ushers them in the back door.

Reasons for the repro problem

To understand this underlying ambivalence, we must analyze the reasons that repros have made such inroads into the trade. (Here, let's grant, and then leave aside, the few bad apple dealers who may actually intend to deceive. The problem is much bigger than they are.)

Quality of the repros. Whether we're talking about furniture or porcelain, many dealers can't tell the difference between an original and what Fontinel calls, in her letter to Warner, a "meticulously copied" repro of it. Recently, a famous dealer-appraiser on The Antiques Roadshow admitted that he had paid a few thousand dollars apiece for what turned out to be reproduction versions of old art pottery, whose retail source was traced to a famous, upscale department store.

This genuine Shaker covered firkin with alternating maple and ash panels, bail handle and characteristic Shaker diamond bale plates dates from the 19th century. Today, there must be hundreds of contemporary American artisans working "in the Shaker style," mostly producing oval boxes in graduated sizes complete with copper nails and "fingered" construction. There are now many thousands more of these "nouveau Shaker" boxes being displayed in antique malls than there are originals. Most of the boxes still look too new to foil an astute shopper. But after a couple of decades of grunge accumulation (a k a "patina"), it may get a lot harder to tell an antique shaker from today's copies.

Dealer laziness. The fact that repros infect the trade like so many microbes is neither here nor there for the few dealers who couldn't care less. One dealer at a high-end antiques mall — someone expert enough to know better but having been in the trade long enough to get careless — had tagged and displayed, as 18th century, a china plate clearly marked "Dishwasher Safe." Really, now, how much elbow grease does it take to flip the plate over and read the mark?

The glass eye. Just as some would-be singers have a "tin ear" when it comes to music, some antique dealers have a "glass eye" in judging age and authenticity. There's no professional process that certifies the competency of antique dealers. Society wouldn’t allow an attorney to hang out a shingle if he/she didn’t have a law degree or couldn't pass
the Bar exam. But damn near anybody can become an antiques dealer — and thanks to eBay, damned near everyone has.

Large antique malls. I hate to even bring this one up because I enjoy shopping multi-dealer shops. Nevertheless, the larger the facility, the more pressure owners and managers are going to feel to keep it full, and the more vulnerable the inventory will be to marginal merchandise — what we might call "the crap factor."

How serious is the trade about addressing the problem?

One of the more recent trends in the trade has been designer-oriented shops that sell a potpourri of antiques, repros, and contemporary crafts. Personally, I avoid these places like the plague; it's hard enough to keep clear of the repros mining the trade without walking into a shop that flat out advertises itself as a battlefield.

Nor is the manufacture of quality repros limited to foreign importers. Right here in the good old US of A, we have craftsmen working with antique tools and antique crafting methods to produce fine reproductions of earlier furniture whose retail prices very nearly rival (when they don’t actually exceed) those of fine originals. In fact, the trade press runs regular feature articles on artisans working in old traditions.

This Ring Design green stoneware pitcher was made by the McCoy Pottery in the 1920s-30s. Breathes there the name of an American pottery, from Roseville to Rookwood, that hasn’t been shamelessly copied and passed off as "the real McCoy?"

The trade press is a good place to document the paralyzing ambivalence in the trade in coming to terms with the repro problem. It costs a lot of money to launch and maintain a periodical, and the bigger and more aspiring it is, the more advertising it takes. In a recent edition of one the trade's most respected journals, I counted no less than three ads in which the advertising print made no bones about the display and sale of repros along with the antiques. The most egregious example was an ad I've seen often and in more than one journal. The ad touts "quality reproductions," "arriving by the container load" and "selling wholesale to the trade." Gee, now, I wonder what trade that would be?.

Toleware trays and yellowware and spongeware make a fabulous display high on the walls and molding of a rustic cedar cabin. These days, both the trays and the bowls are considered fair game for reproduction, so who among those of us who are not experts would dare venture a judgment as to which are old and which born yesterday?

What's a dealer to do?

"Good Eye" is meant to be more than a mere op-ed column, so, in the interests of keeping it practical, here are things dealers and the trade can do to self-police rather than merely praying Fontinel fails in her campaign to get the feds to stop looking the other way.

1. Develop a coherent professional position with respect to repro merchandise. Right now, the topic is so hot for outside regulation that the best favor a dealer can probably do him/herself is simply not to deal in them at all, no matter how well made or by which "master craftsman," here or abroad.

2. Invest in yourself with some ongoing education. You wouldn’t trust a 50-something doc who hadn't been to a medical conference or read a professional journal since med school. Just so, you can't expect the public to trust your expertise if the last time you acquired any new knowledge in your field was 20 years ago.

3. For multi-dealer shop owners and managers, find a substantial space to which you can remove merchandise you flat out know is repro (e.g., the 18th century dish marked "dishwasher safe"). Do a weekly walk-about before the shop opens or after it closes. Tag and remove the items in question to the "repro closet" and demand that dealers remove them.

4. Buy what you know. Yes, even the experts get fooled. But there's a difference between collecting, where you can "buy what you like" and buying for resale, where you'll reduce your repro risk by buying what you know.

Peggy Whiteneck is a writer and collector living in East Randolph, VT. If you would like to suggest a topic she can address in her column, email her at allwrite@sover.net.

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