Part 62

One simple method to detect such a graft is to breathe on the hallmark. The warm breath in most cases will make the graft lines show up. The infallible method is to heat the silver--and this can only be done safely by an expert. Under strong heat the graft lines come into view.

Another method of forgery is to take a valuable and authentically old piece of silver, make a cast of it, and from the casting create a duplicate. The new silver piece is “aged” with an artificial patina. But no matter how good this job might be, the forgers always leave after casting tiny marks and other imperfections which the expert is able to spot by close study. Nathanson insists that even if the job were so well done that an expert missed the telltale marks, he could not be fooled by a phony patina.

Nathanson and his colleagues have their own quiet moments of triumph when they pit their knowledge against that of well-known importers. In one case a New York importer objected to paying duty on a loving cup which obviously was much more than a century old and qualified in his opinion for free entry. He argued that this loving cup was absolutely authentic and that all Nathanson had to do was look at the patina of the silver and also at the hallmarks. “Anyone can recognize those hallmarks and see that they are legitimate,” the importer said.

But Nathanson was quite sure there was something wrong with this piece of silver. The design was not quite right for its period. The hallmarks were genuine. There was no evidence that they had been tampered with. The patina, without doubt, was that of a very old piece of silver, and the sheen could not have been imparted by any chicanery.

Finally he suggested to the importer that they take the loving cup to the workshop of the importer, where his own silversmith could heat it to a near-melting point without doing damage. As they watched the silversmith carefully heat the silver, Nathanson saw that his suspicion was justified. The heat showed up definite lines where a spout had been removed from the “loving cup” and the hole patched over very expertly with silver to change the shape of a teapot and convert it to a loving cup.

Under the law, this piece of silver--even though it was far more than a century old--could not meet the requirements for free importation because it had been changed from its original form.

Many antique dealers are upset by the fact that they import what appears to be a legitimate antique only to find that it does not qualify for free entry because it has been tampered with at some time in the past. For example, one importer brought into the country a very old Oriental panel which had been made into a modern coffee table. He declared the table was entitled to free entry because the panel was an antique. Customs did not agree with the dealer’s viewpoint. While the panel alone would have been permitted to enter free of duty, once it became a part of a modern piece of furniture then it no longer met the legal requirements. This meant that the importer not only had to pay the regular rate of duty but also a penalty of 25 per cent--a penalty which is used by the government to discourage the practice of mislabelling imports.

In the eighteenth century in England it was common practice to use a pole screen while sitting in front of an open fire. The pole screen, sometimes made of painted wood and sometimes of fabric, stood on a tripod base and was placed in front of a person to shield his face from the fire. The top part was adjustable and could be raised or lowered as the person wished while toasting his legs.

Dealers in later years got the idea of converting the pole screens to other uses. They cut the screen from the pole and used the tripod as a base so that the old pole screen became a coffee table. While all the parts actually were antiques in themselves, Customs held that it did not qualify for free entry because the character of the article had been changed over the years. It was not being imported in the same form in which it originated and for which it was primarily intended. The fact that the parts were antique did not qualify it for free entry any more than the table fashioned from an Oriental panel.

Even the best and most reputable of dealers sometimes make mistakes in judging the age of art objects. There was one case in which such a misjudgment cost the dealer $6,300 in duties. A New York art gallery in 1953 paid $4,300 for porcelain vases which it believed to be early eighteenth-century Chinese. They were purchased from importers, who had bought them from a corporation which was disposing of several art objects for an estate. The vases originally had been owned by the royal family of Russia and had been brought to this country after the Russian revolution.

The gallery sold the vases for $9,000 to a woman who maintained her residence in Paris. One evening she boasted to her dinner guests that the vases were early eighteenth-century discoveries which once had reposed in the palace of the late Czar of Russia. One of her guests, an antiquarian, suggested discreetly to her later that possibly her purchases were not eighteenth-century Chinese but were from the nineteenth century.

The woman indignantly demanded an explanation from the gallery, which replied that they would gladly refund her money if she were dissatisfied, but they could not admit that a mistake had been made in dating the vases. The woman shipped the vases back to the United States labelled as antiques, free of duty, and valued at $9,000. When the vases arrived at Customs in New York, one of the Bureau’s experts studied them and declared that the vases were not Chinese eighteenth-century vases, but in fact had been made in France in the nineteenth century.

The Customs examiner’s judgment was upheld by other authorities in this field. The gallery was required to pay duty of $6,300. The tariff law states “if any article ... is detected as unauthentic in ... the antiquity claimed as a basis for free entry, there shall be imposed, collected, and paid ... a duty of 25 per cent of the value ... in addition to any other duty.” And in this case the “other duty” amounted to 45 per cent of the value.

Cultural growth can hardly be reduced to statistics, but Customs’ statistics are at least persuasive in support of the argument that the United States is now enjoying a cultural boom. Ten years ago American collectors were purchasing original paintings at the rate of $8.5 million a year. The purchases have increased to $33 million a year, with indications that the country is on a prolonged art-buying binge. It has been a profitable investment for many, as the values of the modernists’ paintings--particularly popular in this country--have spiralled.

The increase of interest in art has created a problem for Customs because--with the huge sums of money involved--there have emerged in Europe several “factories” producing bogus paintings in Paris, Amsterdam and Rome.

The appearance of the forgeries moved the Customs Bureau to issue this warning in its monthly bulletin:

Dealers and experts must approach all shipments with extreme caution and employ modern scientific testing methods because of the skill that has developed in the forging of scenes and signatures.

A recent purchase of a Modigliani, described merely as a “Portrait of a Woman,” as so many of his works are, demanded much time and research. A well-known American collector obtained the picture for $25,000--a bargain, considering the quality of the painting. Our appraisers and examiners set to work. They delved into the very elaborate history of the painting and discovered that the canvas actually was 2 inches smaller than the original--also there were color differences. To the dismay of the importer, this import was appraised at $150 and returned for duty as a copy.

Many of the fakes are discovered through the use of X-ray and infrared and ultraviolet lights, which reveal overpainting, restorations, and flaws not visible to the naked eye. Chemical analysis of the paints and varnishes used by the artists often give a clue to the period in which the work was done.

Over the years, the Customs examiners have learned that any decision they make on a work of art is potentially explosive. They have learned, too, that on some days they can expect to appear very dumb--and on other days very smart. And that very few people seem to hear of the smart days.

SEX AND THE CENSOR

Censors are unloved creatures. They are damned by writers, artists, and liberal thinkers wherever men cherish free expression. They are regarded generally as crude conformists who wear their righteousness as proudly as a Boy Scout wears his merit badge.

Every rule is likely to have its exception. The exceptional censor in the United States is a tall, good-natured, erudite lawyer named Huntington Cairns, who might justifiably be called the nation’s watchdog against the importation of obscene books, pictures, and other items of a questionable moral character. It would be too much to call Cairns “the beloved censor.” But if a department of the government were capable of affection, then the Treasury Department (and the Customs Bureau) at least should feel this warm emotion for the man who has kept them remarkably free from foot-in-mouth embarrassment for more than a quarter of a century.

Since 1934, Cairns has advised the Treasury and the Customs Bureau in their decisions as to what constitutes obscenity in foreign imports. Since his arrival on the scene there has been no significant public controversy over his decisions, even though the dividing line between genuine art and pornography is often no more than one man’s prejudice.

Officially, Cairns is secretary, treasurer, and general counsel of the National Gallery of Art. His headquarters is a large, secluded and attractive office in a wing of the National Gallery on Constitution Avenue in Washington, D. C. It is from these improbable surroundings that Cairns advises Treasury and Customs on what is obscene and what isn’t, what should be refused entry into this country as plain trash, and what should be permitted to enter. The Treasury is under no obligation to follow his advice, but it does.

Cairns is a big, dark-haired, distinguished-looking man in his early sixties who is far more interested in Plato than in pornography. He is convinced that the ancient Greeks were the greatest people, intellectually, who ever trod the earth. Even their pornography, in his view, was superior to the modern product.

Cairns assumed the role of censor because of a curious chain of events, which began when he successfully opposed government censorship banning George Moore’s translation of Daphnis and Chloe--a book which shocked the sensibilities of many people, including the Customs collector who read it and ordered it banned.

A Baltimore book dealer had imported Moore’s translation with high hopes for a large and lucrative sale in Baltimore and in other cities. But Customs ruled the book was obscene under Section 305 of the Tariff Act of 1930. This act says: “(a) Prohibition of importation--all persons are prohibited from importing into the United States from any foreign country any book, pamphlet, paper, writing, advertising, circular, print, picture, drawing, or other representation, figure, or image on or of paper or other material, or any cast, instrument or other article which is obscene or immoral.... No such article, whether imported separately or contained in packages with other goods entitled to entry, shall be admitted to entry.... Upon the appearance of any such book or matter at any Customs office, the same shall be seized and held by the Collector to await the judgment of the District Court as hereinafter provided; and no protest shall be taken to the United States Customs Court from the decision of the Collector.”