[Rarebooks] FS: Fake Antique Furniture - 1931 Cescinsky Classic, First Edition

[Joslin Hall Rare Books, Ephemera & Photographs]

“The Gentle Art of Faking Furniture”

By Herbert Cescinsky.
Published in London by Chapman & Hall in 1931.

One of the most influential and best-loved books on fake furniture and 
its attendant hazards, fakers, detecting alterations, etc. As collecting 
"old things" became more popular at the end of the 19th century and 
start of the 20th, the trade in restored (faked) furniture exploded, 
with able cabinetmakers and unscrupulous dealers happily pasting 
genuinely old parts together to create "complete" examples of rare 
pieces, usually with no notice to the purchaser that any restoration 
work had been done beyond a brisk dusting and perhaps a new coat of 
varnish. Into this morass of confusion, collusion and corruption Herbert 
Cescinsky, longtime dealer and the author of more than half a dozen 
respected books on antique English furniture, clocks and interiors, 
happily waded with this much-needed book.

Ames & Ward call it "literate and entertaining", and go on to note that 
its lessons, though decades old, apply "with equal force today and 
almost appear to have been written as a cautionary for some modern 
historians -even though the remarks are directed at the collector of 
English furniture, students of American objects can profit by many of 
the general observations. See, in particular, the list of questions 
stated in Chapter 5, 'Detective Methods and the Problem of 
Restoration'."

Hardcover. 8"x10.5", 168 pages plus 288 black & white plates. Covers 
lightly dusty, some splits to the cloth along the hinges. Pages lightly 
toned, several with minor "offsetting" shadows from old paper inserts, 
but otherwise clean and nice, with a tight binding.  $125

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Joslin Hall Rare Books, Ephemera, & Photographs
Post Office Box 49
Hatfield, Massachusetts 01038 USA

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