Forgeries
While perhaps counterintuitive, the forgery is an important context to consider. Forgeries exist at varying levels. Some are made by combining original and modern material to create a new whole that is then passed off as completely original. These are popularly known as “cobbles.” Others are modern fabrications. An important question arises when attempting to discern the nature of an object: when is an object a “forgery” and when is it an “anomaly” or “one-off,” an object that is in fact original or ancient, but displays characteristics that are not typical of the existing surviving group of objects?
With this particular buckle, a few characteristics are anomalous. The first is the amount of gilding at the center of the plate. The question here is why would there be so much gilding under an area that would have been covered by a central inlay? The second is the construction of the buckle hinge. There are only a few known hinges that are the same as the Carlos buckle. One of them is shown in the image at the bottom left. Another (not shown) is allegedly from a grave context (to be confirmed) and the others have been identified as twentieth-century forgeries. These anomalies alone certainly do not make this object a forgery, but they do force us to confront the reality that forgeries of these types of object do exist and they encourage us to do our due diligence when determining the origins of objects in our museum collections.
The words “forgery” and “fake” typically have negative connotations, but un-original materials can be useful. They can help us understand collecting fashions, mostly of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The creation of forgeries indicates that there is or was a market for such materials. They can also be used as teaching tools, either to point out what elements are not authentic, or, if the forgery is good enough, as a stand in for a “real” object.
The objects to the left are all complete or partial forgeries. Although they may seem authentic at first glance, certain discrepancies are apparent: in particular, stylistic features that belong to distinct periods of Visigothic ornament appear together. Although none of these features alone need condemn an object, other potential signs of possible forgery are uneven and non-weathered gilding, atypical buckle constructions, and the use of unusual materials as inlays. In these cases, provenance (the records of when and where an object was found, and its subsequent collection history) can further help determine authenticity.
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