Hi all,
I alerted the auction house to the fact that all four of their advertised PY paperweights were fakes because the description was inaccurate and may have deceived bidders/buyers. I have no issue with these weights being sold as PY fakes.
With regard to the question of numbers, I think we need to refine our analysis here: yes, it is pretty clear that Paul Ysart in a career that lasted over 50 years produced overall many more paperweights than the various fakers of PY weights. However, if we look more closely as to the type of paperweights that were faked, I am not sure that the situation is that clear-cut. First, the great majority of genuine PY’s weights that come on the market are (unsigned) millefiori (and mostly from the pre and post-war Moncrieff period). These more common weights are not those that were commonly faked. Among the fakes, one finds (not surprisingly) copies of the less common and even rare production of Paul Ysart: for example, less common PY weights are those with a butterfly or (even less common) a dragonfly and the rare weights are those with three insects, butterfly over a flower etc. If we look at the fakes produced then I am less sure that the number/rarity argument is fully convincing: for instance, I have seen many more fake PY dragonflies offered for sale in my 10 years of collecting than genuine PY ones. Similarly, I have seen two fake butterfly over a flower weights but not one genuine PY of such design over the period and two PY fake three insects weights but only one genuine PY weight offered for sale over the same period. While there are likely to be more genuine PY single flower weights or genuine PY butterfly weights than faked ones, I do think that the numbers/rarity analysis needs to take account of the fact that fakers produced those items that were the most sought after by collectors – the rarer ones…
SophieB
Topic: More Paul Ysart fakes (Read 2508 times)
