Friday, January 28, 2011

Last night we had a question about an “F Carder” signature. Marshall Ketchum answers.

Alan

There are two things interesting about this piece. The first is the shape number of 4921. Could it be instead shape 4920? It isn’t clear in the photo. This shape 4920 or 4921 is, as far as I know, the only shape that is known in the 4000 range. The Rockwell Museum collection has a vase of the same shape signed with the 4920 number and a Carder post production signature. See Dimitroff Figure 8.4. There has been a question about the authenticity of a shape in the 4000 series but the Rockwell piece was collected before Gardner was published so it was thought that a forger could not have known that numbers in the 4000 range didn’t otherwise exist. There is no known factory drawing for this shape as there are for most others but it is known that some drawings are missing.

The Carder signature while a bit unusual is not rare. Collectors took pieces of Steuben to Mr. Carder after he retired and he would sign them in this way. Normally an Aurene piece was signed “Aurene” and “F. Carder”. A piece that was just signed “F. Carder” should be somewhat suspect. The Carder signature will sometimes bring a premium but it should be recognized that such a signature is easy to forge and many forged signatures exist. It is also fairly easy to forge the normal Aurene factory signature so that pieces should be judged on the nature of the glass and not on the signature.

Marshall

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