The proliferation of books, articles, and documentaries about forgeries testifies to considerable
interest on the part of the educated public. But most of these materials are produced by journalists
and filmmakers, and thus they do not afford the opportunity to enter the expert mind.
Accordingly, I have decided to edit a book of which each chapter will be a factual first-person
narrative in which an expert relates an encounter with forged art, manuscripts, or books. Each
narrative will be a nose-to-tail account, delineating everything from the expert’s first contact
with the forged item(s) to the ultimate consequences, with emphasis on what goes on the expert’s
Mind.
Necessary background information must of course also be supplied, and everything must be
comprehensible to the intelligent and educated reader with no specific training in connoisseurship.
While I envision chapters of approximately 5,000 to 8,000 words, all lengths will be considered.
I conceive this book as a useful guide for those interested in learning about the detection of forgeries,
but it should also be entertaining – even wildly so.
I have a couple of very promising leads concerning publication, but success will ultimately depend
on quality. All revenues, which will probably be scant at best, will of course be divided among all
Contributors.
Please pass this information along to colleagues who may want to participate.
I am an art and rare book dealer. I have published dozens of articles, reviews, and notes concerning
connoisseurship in Print Quarterly, The Library, Word & Image, The Burlington Magazine, The Art Journal, Art in Print,
Modern Philology, The Book Collector, and many other journals, both scholarly and semi-scholarly. Among my
books are First and Otherwise Notable Editions of Medieval French Texts Printed from 1742 to 1874 (2005), The Juvenilia of
William Kentridge: An Unauthorized Catalogue Raisonné (2016), and A Jack Greenberg Lexicon (2017).