Mr. Solon, the eminent authority and a practical worker in artistic pottery, tells in his "Art of the Old English Potter" how, when he was searching for fine specimens to make his collection, he was deceived by some sham old slip ware bought at a high figure in a lonely cottage in a remote district. If the fabricator could lure so studious a collector into his net, it goes without saying that especial precautions should be taken by the beginner not to give large prices unless he has a guarantee or knows the seller's reputation.
Buyers of old delft ware should be careful in examining the decoration of their purchases. Plain ware, which is not so valuable and is comparatively common, is decorated in blue, or a coat-of-arms and a date added, giving a fictitious value to the piece. In fact, such genuine dated pieces are worth ten times the plain ones. Plain jars and jugs worth £2 or £3, with the fraudulently added word "Sack" and the initials "C. R." in blue, may tempt the unwary collector to give £20. It will thus be seen that this is the most dangerous of frauds, and difficult to detect unless the collector has handled many decorated pieces, for the delft itself is absolutely genuine.
THE ENAMEL KILN. Showing the ware after being enamelled stacked ready for firing.
_By the courtesy of Messrs. Josiah Wedgwood & Sons._]
Similarly, plain pieces of genuine Staffordshire salt glaze are enamelled in colours in order to enhance the value, owing to the fashionable demand for coloured examples. As much as £50 has been paid by an unfortunate collector for a teapot quite worth this if genuine old colour work, but unhappily it was, although fine old salt glaze, quite recently coloured, evidently with fraudulent intentions.
Staffordshire figures that are modern tell their own story, or should do so, to the collector who has ever carefully examined the potting and the glaze of fine old examples. Nor is there much excuse for the blundering collector who cannot readily distinguish between the crude modern Toby jug with its blatant colouring, so smudgy and smeary with black stains to impart age, and its genuine prototype.
There are some fairly modelled Toby jugs, of modern origin, one in particular seated in a corner chair, with a salt-glaze surface. Another "fake" appeals to the lover of the Whieldon style, and has a mottled base and hat. But they are, as the expressive term goes, "hot from the oven." The "Vicar and Moses" was so well modelled by Ralph Wood that it shared the fate of George Morland's pictures which were copied by his contemporaries. Ralph Wood's "Vicar and Moses" was copied all through the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, and to-day modern fabrications repeat the same model _ad nauseam_. Sham Voyez "Fair Hebe" jugs, made for foolish collectors, are frequently to be seen and avoided.