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Discover Mid-America — November 2007

How old is it? - Part I

A defining expertise for the antiques and collectibles trade is the ability to tell how old something is. Dealers get it wrong — surprisingly often — and when they get it wrong, it’s for the same reason that collectors get it wrong: an exuberant failure to be conservative enough in estimating an object's age. Walk into any multi-dealer shop and you'll probably be able to develop your own fairly lengthy list of items that are being sold as "vintage" to this or that era but whose optimistic age estimates are off by several decades, if not a century or two.

Given the usual correlation between age and value in the trade, this unbridled optimism is understandable. Besides, estimating the age of an item acquired on the secondary market — whether for collection, decoration, or resale — isn’t all that easy, even with the historical benchmarks that one might think ought to give us a clue.

For example, in 1890, the McKinley Tariff Act became law. Mostly, the provisions of this law were intended to protect the interests of the American agricultural industry against price decimation from cheap produce grown overseas. Whatever the product, from porcelain to produce, the McKinley Act imposed a walloping 48.4% tariff on imports into the United
States. (The Act wasn't so hotly received in this country, either, but that's another story!)

One of the provisions of the Act that is familiar to most antique dealers is that goods produced in foreign countries for export to the United States had to be clearly marked — in English — with the country of origin. U.S. law interprets the "English only" provision rather strictly.

The top of an Imari-style porcelain box with a Japanese mark but probably made recently despite the lack of an English-language country attribution.

When the Japanese tried to get by with using the word "Nippon" as an Anglicized spelling for the Japanese name for their country — ultimately sparking the collecting craze that goes by that name today — authorities in the U.S. said that wasn't good enough. The mark had to say "Japan," a point made clear in a 1921 revision of the McKinley Act.

It's easy to jump to the conclusion that any porcelain item that doesn't have the English language word for the country of origin in the mark "must have been" made before 1890, the year the McKinley Tariff Act was passed. Correlatively, it's tempting to conclude that anything marked with the country of origin "must have been" made after 1890. As for Japanese porcelain, if it's marked in Japanese characters, it must be pre-1890, and
if it's marked Nippon, it must be before 1921. Right? What could be easier!

Well, not so fast!

The U.S., powerful though it may be, cannot legislate other countries' import laws. So, for example, a Japanese item without a "Made in Japan" mark may simply not have been made for a U.S. market even though such items could still make their way here in tourist suitcases. A U.S. antique dealer might not have a hand-painted Imari porcelain box made in 1865 but a transfer ware Imari-style box made in 1965 — or even 2005.

The Spanish porcelain model of a beagle at right is a Lladro, one of the pricier of 20th century fine porcelains. The one on the left was made in Korea "in the style of Lladro." As you can see, it's quite well modeled. The only brand or country attribution on it, however, is a lightly adhered paper label. Decades hence, long after the label has been lost, collectors will be puzzling over the item on the left, wondering fervently if it couldn’t be an "unmarked" Lladro.

Also, the federal government's interest in the country of origin, for purposes of imposing protectionist tariffs, ends at the port of entry. The government doesn't care who knows where an item came from once it leaves the port for points inland. That means import law can be satisfied merely by affixing a lightly adhering paper label to the item, which falls off practically in transit from the port of entry. That's one reason so much of this stuff worms its way onto the secondary market to be passed off as antiques.

On the other hand, an item marked "England" or "Germany" wasn't necessarily made after 1890. Even well before the McKinley Tariff Act demanded it for imports simple national pride often caused other countries to affix their country name to their products.

The paper label on the base of the beagle model made in Korea. The Lladró styles and models upon which this item is likely based have cobalt blue back stamps clearly identifying both the maker and the country of origin. Once this label falls off, who's to say where it came from?

For these reasons, savvy collectors and dealers in pottery and porcelain know better than to use the mark as the sole indicator of age — especially in Asian porcelain with its tradition of students honoring masters across several generations and all using the same mark. Collectors rely on things like color, decoration and paint style in determining the age of Asian porcelains, as these tend to be particular to certain dynasties. In polychrome Chinese porcelain, one of the telltale signs that an item with an "ancient" mark is of later vintage is a mixture of decoration styles and other characteristics from several different (including later) dynasties.

In glass production, the challenges of age attribution are complicated by the consolidation in the decorative glass industry and the practice whereby surviving companies often bought at auction the most popular molds of closing companies and kept right on using them. Often, these molds retain the mark of the company of origin. That's why glass collectors use other clues to age besides the mark, including color. Modern items made from old molds are quite often made in colors never found in the originals, and the same holds true for recently minted glass in popular Depression glass patterns.

I bought this Westmoreland-marked covered cat dish from an antique shop, thinking it was an original Westmoreland and back in the days before I learned to be cautious in marks attributions. The rather gaudy red color of the head should have clued me in had I known then what I know now. This item was actually made by Summit Art Glass of Ohio using the original Westmoreland molds. The dish is marked Westmoreland, both under the cover and under the base, but Westmoreland never made it in this particular color combination.

Recently, one or more modern manufacturers have begun producing graduated Shaker boxes with copper nails and the bentwood tongue construction that are hallmarks of Shaker manufacture. In fact, if you Google the phrase "Shaker wooden box construction" or even just "Shaker oval box," most of the listings that will come up are instructions on how to make your own. Right now, new boxes look brand new, but I've often thought, while looking at them, that a non-expert may well be fooled by them after they've been around long enough to acquire some decades of patina and grunge. This is especially likely as the brand new stuff is already showing up in antique shops, where the confusion between originals and copies/repros is becoming lamentably commonplace.

Some dealers are specialists; many more are generalists. Either way, no one can be an expert in every antiques and collectibles field. So I recommend to dealers a principle I use in my own collecting: For any item beyond your field of expertise, assume it's a late production until you can confirm it as earlier.

Next Month's Column: "How Old Is It: Part II - A Case Study in Analyzing Age"

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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